Waiting for You formerly Work in Progress
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: An AU fic. What if someone had resurrected Karr and given him what he'd lacked in his original incarnation? C. Redhart and R. Stone are very similar.
1. Default Chapter

karr 1

Richard Harrington paced along the verge of a white highway underneath a brilliant noonday sun. Harrington's hair was jet black and rather too long, his eyes large and disarmingly tawny gold. Most people, looking at those eyes, saw them as brown; but at times like this under brilliant light, they were owl-yellow, fringed with black lashes lush as a girl's. His face was lean and tight and chiseled, the product not only of beautiful bones but also the legacy of weeks without rest, days without end, unrelenting stress. The eyes were ringed with violet, and the face was paler than it should have been under the baking heat of the sun. He wore black pants, a dark charcoal shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, dark boots that made no noise in the white dust of the verge.

The car he now returned to lean against was black, like most things around Richard; black, matte, drawing light into itself rather than reflecting any. It caught the eye; it was a weapon, lying full of indiscriminate power on the white ribbon of the road. Travertine dust had not touched the ebon surface: where Richard's boots were made grey by the brilliant white clouds of his pacing, the tires and the paintwork of the car remained icy black. There was no manufacturer's mark on the car anywhere; no sign that it had rolled off a Detroit production line, or that it had been featured on a primetime advertising spot with a sexy voiceover and a quoted APR. It merely was, like Richard himself: silent, and dangerous, and fascinating. 

Richard folded his arms, leaning back against the side of the car. Above him the sky wheeled slowly, bluer than he had imagined possible, and in the distance an engine muttered softly, far away and quiet. He remained still, listening to the faint rumble, the whine of someone shifting up. No use getting up. It was probably nothing to do with him.

The engine note changed, getting closer. Richard raised his head from the warm metal with an effort, saw in the distance a white cloud of acrid dust and a shape within it, approaching. Probably a random passerby, he said to himself.

Ah, yes, he answered his own statement, but how many people are likely to be driving a car with an engine that sounds like that along a lonely highway in deepest Nevada in the middle of the day?

It was close enough now to see the color of the paintwork. White. Nothing remarkable, he thought; lots of cars are white here in the West where it makes a real difference in temperature. Not like mine, he added mentally. Silly, really; the amount of time he spent out in the baking zenithlight, he ought to get a different paintjob.

None of this mattered, because he knew the car, and the driver. He had known since he had heard the gearshift, still a mile away. He knew that gearbox; he had been there when it was put in.

Richard stood straight, leaving the support of the black car's side with reluctance. Acrid dust bit at the back of his throat as the white car slowed to a dramatic halt facing the black one, bitter clouds rising around them. He remained where he was, as the driver's door opened and a leg emerged, encased in black leather, the foot clad in a three-inch heeled boot. The owner of the leg slammed the car door behind her and hurried out of the settling dustcloud to where Richard stood, arms folded.

He hadn't seen the woman who now called herself Riley Stone for years. When he had known her before, her name had been Jane Balardine, and the world had been a great deal simpler. She had been blonde before: her hair was now white-blonde, silvery, and cropped close to her skull. The massive amounts of blue eye makeup she had favored were replaced by black smudged eyeliner and grey shadow, and nothing else. Her lips were flushed, but she had been biting them; her face, like Richard's, was pale and tired under the California tan. He thought again as he had thought so many times in the past, that she was really not beautiful, really not lovely in the classical sense of the word; but there was something about Riley Stone that struck the eye, something that made you turn your head and stare after her as she passed. Much like the black car, he thought suddenly.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Riley said. Her voice was cool, tired, rough.

"I haven't been waiting long," Richard told her. "You have the disks?"

"Yes. They don't know, of course. They'd never let me get out of the complex with them. Grey could give Kitt a run for his money, but I'd still rather they didn't know." Her voice held a note of amusement, but he saw nothing but steel in her eyes. "You have the money?"

He sighed. There was something tremendously theatrical about the exchange of a disk box for a suitcase full of money, but it was unavoidable. Here under the open sky he felt as if he could ignore the feeling of being in a bad spy thriller, but it was with some disgust he reached into the open driver's side window of the black sports car and pulled a locked briefcase from the side door pocket.

"Twenty thousand," he said, handing it over. Riley nodded curtly and went back to her car, returned with a small black box that rattled as she shook it. 

"It's all we could find. I know there isn't much left, but this should help rebuild him. They got the data backed up the last time...you know, before it happened....and these are the original backup disks. I don't really know how much was lost."

"It's better than nothing," Richard told her. "Thank you. I....well, thank you. This means rather a lot to me."

"I know," Riley said, and for a moment she looked very, very young. "It's all right. I only wish I could do more. The project isn't really just a project anymore."

"It never was," he said, and suddenly he saw not the white travertine dust of the highway but a darkened workshop full of computer equipment, and the form of a black car not entirely unlike the one he stood beside, and a yellow light that flickered once and died. "Not really. They didn't know what they were doing; they didn't understand. They tried to create a machine and they made life, but they didn't do it entirely right."

"Richard," Riley said gently. "Richard, I know. I was there."

"Yes, of course," Richard said. His British accent was suddenly very much in evidence. "I'm sorry. I keep forgetting; you were so different in those days."

"I know," Riley said, regarding her boots. "I was deplorable, wasn't I....the quintessential child of the Eighties. I've reformed. I'm a cop now. Well, some of the time. A detective."

"Sure you are," he said, the conversation back in easier places, the banter rising easily to his mind. "You're a cop the way I'm the King of Sweden. Mmmm-hmm."

"Oh shut up, Mister Spy," she retorted, without rancor. "You haven't seen my badge yet."

"Spare me the sight of your badge. I believe you; I can't imagine the LAPD would turn down a chance to have someone like you in their finest. The famous daughter of Lord Balardine, owner of Marvel Airlines and one of the richest men in the western hemisphere....the young debutante with experience in the NASCAR circuit...." He trailed off as Riley advanced on him, briefcase raised. "Oh, mercy, I cry you mercy..."

"You're impossible," she said in a perfect imitation of Debbie Reynolds. "Damn you, Richard, you always made it hard to stay sulky, even when I really wanted to. I suppose I have you to thank for Grey, too."

"Damn straight," Richard said. "I connected every system in that car by hand."

"Never think I don't appreciate that," she said seriously, turning to look at the sleek white shape. "Every time I drive with Grey I thank you. It's been amazing. I don't think anyone who's not experienced it would understand."

"I know," he said. His hand reached out almost involuntarily to the smooth skin of the black car beside him. "I know."

For a moment they stood silent in the baking heat of midday; then Richard came back to himself and took his hand away. "Thank you, Riley."

"You're entirely welcome," she said, and her voice was warm and comforting. "Let me know if there's anything else I can do. Please."

"When he's finished," Richard said slowly, "would you...be there, when he wakes up? I think he'd be more comfortable with you there."

"Of course," she said, and there was something strange in her voice which Richard identified in a few moments as...honor, and awe. "Of course."

They shook hands, awkwardly, and then he gave up and pulled her into his arms and crushed her to him, burying his face in her pale hair. He felt her hands on his back move up to his neck, and her lips sought his own, and he met her mouth with his. 

Later, much later, as the sun was setting over the distant mountains and striking fire from the mica chips in the road, Richard Harrington sped north and east into Utah. The black box of disks lay on the passenger seat beside him, secured in place by the seatbelt, and the radio was blasting something by Beethoven into the darkened cabin. Harrington drove like a man possessed, hurtling along the interstate at ninety-five, his radar detector dark and silent. Since he had left Riley Stone on the verge of the highway in Nevada he had not stopped, and he was so tired his concentration was beginning to slip; but there was enough iron self-control in him to keep his wandering mind on the road and the eventual objective.

He couldn't get Riley out of his mind. She had changed so much since the days of their common employment at the estate in Nevada that it seemed the woman he had known then and the woman he had held that afternoon were two discrete and separate entities; that she had shed the skin of her old life and become someone entirely new. But there had been so much time between those meetings that he wondered with part of his mind if he remembered correctly how Riley had once been.

Long blonde hair, starlet hair, unstyled. Big grey eyes looking very young under their burden of makeup; the typical fresh English complexion. Her name had been Jane Balardine, and her work for FLAG had been not entirely approved of by her father Hanson Balardine, under whose aegis FLAG had acquired a great deal of exterior funding and computer technology. He had wanted her to be a Valley girl, to be beautiful and beloved and distanced from the danger inherent in what FLAG did; but she had read some papers she wasn't meant to see, and she had learned too much to keep quiet. He remembered her walking into the lab one day when they were working on the project, nearing completion then in 1981, her hair loose and flowing over the shoulders of her mechanic's coverall, a garment so much too big for her that she appeared to be drowning in it. She had said her name was Jane and that she had been assigned as a minor mechanical assistant in the project, and would they kindly tell her where to start. 

He laughed, remembering. Of course they'd recognized her, and said Go on, pull the other one, miss, you're not supposed to get your lovely fingers dirty, and of course she had put her hands on her birdlike hips and defied every attempt to reason with her. Eventually they had had to accept that she was of legal majority, and had put her to work doing very light mechanical labor, machining miniature bores, checking the threads on screwshanks, putting together the parts of the speedometer. For a week Jane had sat there in the corner of the lab working diligently over her scutwork, and then one night he'd come in late and found her lying on a trolley underneath the body of the car, with a spanner set. 

"What on earth are you doing, Miss Balardine?" he had demanded, respectfully.

She had rolled out from under the Trans Am and regarded him with disarming eyes and an adorable smudge of grease on her nose. "I knew when they put the engine in that one of the mounts was off. I'm just putting it right. Won't be a minute," and she had slung herself back under the car. He had grabbed her foot and pulled her out again, not ungently.

"Miss Balardine, even were it at all appropriate for you to be here after closing hours, working on parts of the project you haven't been approved for, how on earth do you know the engine mount is wrong?"

"Just look at it," she'd said, rolling back under. With a sigh, Richard had peered at the liquid-filled cylinders of all four engine mounts, and had seen what she meant. One of them was canted at a slight angle, hardly perceptible. He wouldn't have seen it had she not pointed it out.

"My God," he had said. "I applaud you. Where did you learn so much about engines?"

"I drove for NASCAR two years ago," she had told him, still under the car. "My team was good; they taught me a lot about this sort of thing. Ha. Got you," she said to the mount, and there was a clunking noise from underneath the car. 

"I had no idea," he had said, truthfully. From that moment on he had had a greater respect for Jane Balardine than he'd imagined possible. Later, after the car was done, and the physical systems were being checked, it was Jane who did the test driving; and there he saw genius. She had such grace and ease of control that he envied her; it was a talent, something very few drivers had.

He turned off the superhighway, heading north now, reaching for the Henry Mountains. Henry, he thought vaguely; wasn't that a familiar name? Something about a red Mustang, and another short blonde woman with a knack for driving. He let the thought go; it did nothing for him. The sun was entirely gone now, fading even from the blue of the sky to leave behind a sickly black purple. He was so cold, despite the summer warmth that still pervaded the black car's cabin, a relic of the sunlight that had burned his neck standing waiting for Riley by the roadside. So cold, and he had a hundred miles to go before he slept, and more than a hundred hours' work before there was anything to look at. 

Riley Stone, in the white car she called Grey with the rich girl's knowledge of horsemanship, sat by the side of the sea and refused to weep.

She could still taste Richard Harrington. The waves lapped gently on the white sands of Malibu, the little organisms in the water coruscating and scintillating as they were flung over and over by the force of the surf. She had a sudden vision of another car on these shores, a dark car, silvery underneath, flashing golden light as it turned over and over to land on the rocks at the foot of a California cliff. 

Riley put the image from her mind with the ease of long practice. Now was not the time to think of what Karr had been.

There, she thought. I said his name. I said Karr's name. Now nothing can really ever be the same.

I wonder what they all thought when they heard he was dead. I wonder. Wilton died before any of this really happened, of course, but Michael and Devon and Bonnie and the rest of them were so afraid of Karr. And Kitt, never forgetting Kitt...what did he really think of Karr, when the flames of the explosion were washed away by the incoming tide?

An old song drifted into her mind.

_Crash and burn_

All the stars explode tonight

How'd you get so desperate

How'd you stay alive?

Help me please, burn the sorrow from your eyes

Oh come on be alive again, don't lay down and die...

She hadn't heard Hole for months now. It was hard to stop the memories of Karr now that the words of the song had brought it all back to her. Malibu...crash and burn.....oceans of angels...down by the sea is where you drown your scars....

No. Not Karr tonight. She ran a hand over Grey's steering wheel, tracing the lines of the hard bound leather, sensuously. Karr was not hers; she had sold the disks to Harrington, and Harrington was the only one who could save him now. There had been four of them back in the 80s; herself, Richard Harrington, a computer engineer named Simon French, and a young mechanic called Joly Brice, who had, like herself, been half in love with Harrington...and with Karr. Four of them against FLAG, who had been there at the beginning of it all, when the faces of all Wilton Knight's hopeful stockholders had fallen so comprehensively at the test track where it was proved that Karr's programming made him dangerous to humans. There had been such horror in the crowd that day, such bared fright and terror at the thought of so much power without the concept of human life's value; and they had been deadly embarrassed as well to have sunk six million into the project. She had been there, had watched the mannequin child shatter as Karr's MBS-covered nose made impact, watched the fragments of the mannequin fly high in the air as the sleek black form hurtled by without even slowing. She had understood immediately: they had programmed him to preserve himself, and had not entirely understood what they had meant by adding the codicil _at any cost_, which included sacrificing human life. She had understood, and she had known what needed to be done. But old Wilton had been so disgusted with the outcome and the embarrassment that he had ordered Karr deactivated and a new project begun under the Knight aegis: the Knight Industries Two Thousand. 

It would be 2000 in another few months, Riley mused. She got out of the white sports car and wandered down to the water's edge. Try as she might, she couldn't get the hot test track at the Knight estate out of her mind. Over and over she saw the fragments of the mannequin shatter and disappear with a terrible cracking sound; and later, in Laboratory Three, the last silent sweep of Karr's scanner as all power had been shut off to his CPU. Only later did any of them know that he had remained aware during deactivation.

She gazed up at the skies, gleaming with early stars. She couldn't imagine that; couldn't imagine the terrible sensory deprivation, the deaf dumb blackness of no input. She was terribly afraid Karr was permanently scarred by the experience; any human would have gone irreparably insane under such stress. But Karr wasn't human.

They had blamed themselves, the four of them, when Karr's CPU was stolen from Lab 3. When Karr was stolen and turned into a weapon for a couple of thieves, and when Kitt and Michael had forced him off the cliff into the breaking waves below, they blamed themselves, and they had mourned. Richard Harrington had already left FLAG to work in Utah as a software developer, and the others had been taken off the Knight project, working in another aspect of FLAG's mission, but she had remained. Her father and Devon Miles had been thick as thieves after the old man's death, and she had cadged a part-time job as a mech on the Knight Industries Two Thousand project. Hanson Balardine hadn't seemed to mind when she changed her name to Riley Stone; he had thought it was something to do with the occasional acting she did in indie films in LA. She had become friends with Kitt, as most of them did. Kitt was simply pleasant to be with. She remembered the conversations she'd had with Karr in the darkened recesses of the garage after the rest of the team had gone home, and compared them with conversations she'd had with Kitt; the brothers were utterly dissimilar in most respects, but both of them were curious about human life. Karr was intrigued by the illogic of humanity, had a sort of clinical fascination for the strange reactions of humans, while Kitt was so human himself that she had had to discuss emotions with him as empathetic equals. She had been around when he'd had questions Bonnie or Michael couldn't answer, and she'd learned a lot about how he thought. But always she remembered the dark cold voice of Karr, and the sweep of the yellow scanner in the dark.

She and Harrington were the only ones left. She had called Harrington when Karr's body had been found and possessed by a lucky beachcomber, when he had come back from the dead the second time. She had called Harrington, and he had come down, and they were just in time to see the final epic battle between Kitt and Karr. She remembered so clearly watching the two shadows converge, as the two cars flew towards each other at the height of their turbine leaps, both following parabolic curves that were fatally calculated to intersect. She had wept a little when the remains of Karr were scattered in the desert, for what might have been. She had thought it was over.

Then, two months ago, that had all changed. She had been working late over a particularly knotty little problem in Kitt's fuel system, with Justin Turner, when Bonnie had come into the garage with a strange look on her face and told her someone from Utah was calling for her, and that it sounded urgent. 

Harrington's voice had been so desperate she hadn't recognized it at first. "Riley?" he said. "Riley, is that you?"

"Yeah," she had responded, holding the phone a little away from her ear. "Who is this?"

"Richard Harrington," he'd snapped. "You _do_ remember me, don't you?"

"Of course," she'd said. "What's wrong, Richard? Are you all right?"

"Yes, yes," he'd hurriedly assured her. "Riley, back when the Knight Industries project got started, do you remember how the CPUs were backed up?"

"Yeah, they're still using the system. There was a remote backup location, everything was being monitored, backup disks were cut for all core programming. If there was any sort of loss of integrity they'd automatically send all input to the remote location, where the recovery could proceed. Why?"

"Did Karr have a system like that?"

She went completely cold all of a sudden. Could they have overlooked something so elementary? "Oh, my God," she said, and nearly dropped the receiver. "Oh, God, Richard, I think he did. It must have been destroyed, though, when he was shut down. It must have been."

"Check, Riley. Check." 

"I will. I have to find an excuse."

"You'll think of something," he said. "You have to, Riley, oh, God, you have to. We could bring him back, the right way. We could rescue him."

In the other room someone's radio was playing. _Cry to the angels I'm going to rescue you I'm going to set you free tonight..._

"I'll call you back," she'd said. Adrenaline was flooding her bloodstream. She had replaced the receiver ever so gently, returned to the garage and with the trained actor's calm had finished her task with Justin; it was half past midnight when she could get away. 

She found the backup mainframe. Dusty as hell, buried under a pile of boxes, its LEDs dark and cold, it had sat here since Karr was deactivated the first time. She had found it, after seven hours of looking, and she still had no idea if there was any vestige of Karr left in the black box.

She had been too exhausted to try anything that night. She had searched through the FLAGNet inventory for any official acknowledgement of the mainframe's existence, but couldn't find it anywhere official. It must have been assumed to have been destroyed when Karr was deactivated. Officially it didn't exist, which made her job so much easier.

Riley had looked up her old friend Simon French the computer engineer. He still worked for FLAG, but had no official connection to the Knight project. He gave her a long cool look when she walked into his office, but when she mentioned Karr's name he leaned forward and breathed sharply, hanging on her words. She told him she'd found the mainframe, and he nodded.

"I knew they'd forgotten to destroy it. I signed a form saying all vestiges of the KARR were gone, deactivated, burned out, when Wilton gave the order, but I 'forgot' to make sure the mainframe was fried. It should still work, I think, if we can find the backup disks."

"You don't know where they are?" she asked, defeatedly.

"I don't know. But we'll find them, Riley," he had told her, taking her hand in his. "I've waited for the right moment and the right people to do this with. I think this may be the right time, and I know you and Richard are the right people."

"I wonder what made him think of the mainframe?" she said aloud.

She'd found out. Richard was a software developer; Richard had just finished a program that worked like the old-style 'tapeworm' had done, only more effectively and efficiently: it moved through the memory circuits of a computer, selectively targeting and erasing or altering specific memories or directives. It was the most sophisticated reprogramming aid ever developed. He had been sitting at his computer finishing the code when the thought of Karr had drifted into his mind, and he had suddenly thought how perfect his program would be for reprogramming Karr's CPU to erase the memories of deactivation and to alter slightly the prime directive. Immediately on the heels of that thought had come the knowledge that Karr was destroyed; and then, staring at his active matrix screen in the blackness of midnight in Torrey, Utah, he had thought simply of the backup mainframe. Was it possible that Karr's recovery mainframe had survived the purge?

He'd called Riley. And Riley had come through.

She and Simon French scoured the R&D complex until they found the backup disks, the tiny slivers of black plastic and magnetized tape that would allow them to reinstall Karr's program core. It took them two months, but they found them. It was a solemn moment when Simon slid the first of the seven disks into the drive on the side of Karr's mainframe, and waited to see if he would come back to them.

She would never forget the surge of unspeakable relief that flooded through her at the sight of the LEDs lighting up on the front panel as the lowlevel functions came online. Karr was still there. Hurriedly they switched the computer back off, secure in the knowledge that in a safe place he could recover; he could be brought back, this time correctly. It was possible.

Richard had come down in the dark of night to take the mainframe back to Utah, where he could work on duplicating the circuitry, rebuilding the basic forms of Karr's CPU, and they had set to work copying the seven disks, backing up the backups. Two days later, with a copy of the disk set locked safely away in her apartment in LA, Riley had driven out to the Nevada-Arizona border to meet Richard and hand the backup disks over to him. She had seen the black car he was driving, and knew he planned to put Karr into it, planned it as his new body. It wasn't a make she recognized, which led her to believe it was a custom job. She knew most of the makes in production in the Western world. It was beautiful, as Karr's old body had been, but instead of the silver fade on the lower quarter of the old Trans Am, the new car was matte black all over, sleek and dangerous and beautiful. Her own Grey was a Stingray, 1963, matte white, custom V-10 engine, and as Richard had said, he had put in the systems himself. Grey wasn't sentient, exactly, but he was highly responsive. Richard was a software man, but his first love was the automobile, and like herself, he was a highly competent driver. She didn't know if the black car was his own work or one of his body-shop friends, but it had a Bill Mitchell air to it that she loved; it looked, in the words of the master, like it was going like hell just sitting still.

She had to wonder what Karr was going to be like when he came back. She was afraid of him, of course. She had feared him, but she had also acknowledged that his indifference to human life was natural for him, was not his fault, was the way he was programmed. He had a personality, even then, even back when he was just activated. She'd always been drawn to the dark side of things, and darkness, deep voices and flickering lights made her catch her breath; Karr had all three in spades. She flattered herself that he might have taken some interest in his conversations with her; otherwise, why would he have bothered to respond to her overtures?

She was cold. She found herself still on the beach, watching the scintillation of bioluminescent algae and plankton in the curling lip of each wave, shivering in the dusk. Stiffly she rose, walked back to where Grey waited for her, gleaming dully in the dark, like bone.

***


	2. Two

Harrington parked the black car inside the concrete expanse of his first floor. Gently scooping the box of disks from the passenger seat, he got out and made his way stiffly upstairs to where the black box that contained the physical aspect of Karr sat connected to his Compaq laptop by heavy cables. He had put together the CPU from the backup mainframe, replacing certain chips with newer versions, upgrading some connections, but the basic structure remained the same. He slid the first of the seven disks into the drive on the side of his computer, ran a check, and uploaded the reinstall command to Karr's CPU.

He thought suddenly of the book of Revelations. The scroll with the seven seals; when the first seal was opened, a crowned figure on a horse appeared, perhaps Christ, perhaps someone quite different.

His laptop beeped at him. 

PROGRAM KARR RUNNING, it informed him.

For a long time lines of code flashed on the screen, as old circuits flared to life, energy flowed along dormant paths, old synaptic clefts were bridged once more by firing electrical neurons. After what seemed like hours, the self-install program said

INSERT BACKUP DISK II

Richard slipped the first disk out of the drive and replaced it. Who showed up at the opening of the second seal? He had a feeling it was War. 

CORE FUNCTIONS RELOADED

SELFDIAGNOSIS RUNNING

FAULT FOUND IN CIRCUIT 07/00439 PERC.INIT NOT RESPONDING

Richard tried to think. Perc.init must be the initialization of the perceptor network that supplied Karr with external sensation. He cursed. There was a sensor on top of the backup CPU, of course, as there had been on the original. He touched it gently, unsure of what to do.

The screen went wild. For a moment all he could see was the repeated cry

PERCEPTOR CIRCUITS OVERLOAD

and then it settled down, merely complaining,

PERCEPTOR CIRCUITS FAULTY

He could live with that. He typed in a command that would bypass the faulty circuits; he'd call Simon when he was done to find out how the perceptor network was set up.

When the second disk was done running, he closed down the program, putting both the laptop and the barely-aware Karr to sleep. The next step was delicate enough so that he knew he needed to be more awake and aware than he was in order to do it justice. He stood up shakily, made it to the couch beside his desk before he collapsed in utter exhaustion. The idle watcher would have thought he was having sweet dreams, for on his tired face there was the ghost of a terrible, hopeful smile.

He was on a white highway again, under a broiling sun. It was icy, despite the sun's brilliant overhead light. He shivered in his dark coat, standing in the middle of the bright cold road, watching a cloud of dust on the distant horizon coming steadily closer. He began to make out shapes within the cloud; a car, a bright car, dark but reflective, light pouring from it like a secondary sun. Within the light he saw another light, a moving yellow light that mesmerized him like the rabbit in the proverbial highlights, and now he shivered in good earnest, for he knew the yellow light. The dark car was close enough so that he could tell no human was driving it, and he stood his ground in the middle of the road and waited for Karr to come to him. He was on a white road, and the white road curved, and the white road was the test track at the R&D complex, and he was the mannequin child Karr had destroyed the day he was shown to Wilton Knight's people. He stood, aware of the massed watchers, aware of the scream of the great engine, aware of the sweep of the yellow light, aware of the power that was closing in. He knew suddenly that Karr wasn't going to stop for him, wasn't going to spare him, for he was worth as much as the mannequin child had been in the Trans Am's view. He knew, and he tried to move, but his feet were fixed to the ground; he looked death in the face, saw its beauty and its power, and was transfixed, awaiting Karr's black prow like the crack of doom.

And, amazingly, he stopped.

At the very last moment, the last possible moment, Karr slammed on the brakes. Rubber screamed on the surface of the road that was at once the highway and the test track; smoke billowed from beneath his wheel wells, he remained pointed directly at Richard, and came to a screeching stop exactly an inch from Richard's knees. The yellow scanner swept madly back and forth, the reek of burned rubber filled the air. Karr's engine rumbled dangerously, but he made no further move. Richard suddenly found his feet had been freed from the road surface, and he stumbled away from the black prow. He fell on his knees as his legs suddenly turned to jelly, and he knelt before Karr, reaching out for the nose of the Trans Am, and amazingly Karr rolled forward the few inches to him so that his sleek prow came under Richard's reaching hand, and he was warm to the touch.

Richard woke, sweating, staring at the ceiling with a knowledge of urgency warm in his mind.

In another country on another continent, a man called Jay Rose lay in a bed that had belonged to the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, in a chateau built for a French prince, and drank wine made before he had been born. The woman who lay beside Rose in the great carven bed was asleep, unaware of the dissatisfied look in his famously green eyes. She was a minor model, employed by Dior, and was the fifth woman to share Rose's bed this year. She felt honored to be on that list.

Jay put down the glass, ran a hand through his black hair with its single silver streak, regarding the underside of the canopy with a mixture of disenchantment and inebriation. He was bored. Boredom, for Jay Rose, was the equivalent of death.

For two years now he had been bored, and had attempted to rid himself of the boredom by spending quite excruciatingly large amounts of money on dissolute and hedonist pursuits, including the chateau he now lay in and the woman he lay beside. In the desperate quest to amuse himse lf, he had run through almost a billion dollars, and nothing had worked. He was quite possibly the third richest man in the world, after the Sultan of Brunei and Bill Gates, and everybody knew it; he could have anything and anyone he wanted. After a while he had realized that this was part of the problem, and had begun to challenge himself by trying to obtain the impossible, to achieve what could not be achieved easily. Unfortunately, Jay Rose was not only bored but also very clever and very resourceful, and it was not really that difficult for him to climb Everest or fly fighter jets or learn Sanskrit, and he had run through his list of challenges in less than fourteen months, and had returned to his original lassitude, comforting himself with food, wine, women, song, and the rest of the world's time-honored pleasures. Five models and three castles later, he lay in the Chateau de Chartrenceau beside Taylor Madison...or was it Madison Taylor? he wondered vaguely through the fog of Chateau Lafitte Rothschild '50, and decided it didn't matter....and seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in his twenty-nine years. 

Jay Rose had been the love child of a British racecar driver and a Hollywood producer, brought up in three continents under the constant glare of flashbulbs and the burden of public attention. He had been adorable when he was younger; now, approaching his thirtieth birthday, he was breathtakingly handsome. His jet-colored hair was graced by a single streak of silver-white over his left eye, which was slightly greener than the right; the color of emerald rather than of malachite. His face was almost androgynous in its beauty; the hair was cut deliberately shaggy, falling over his high brow with calculated abandon; but the bones were strong enough to temper the beauty and make it masculine. His body was lean and sleek and hard-muscled, sculpted by the most expensive of personal trainers and daily exercise in his war room, retaining the gold of the tan he'd acquired in Australia's outback. 

He had begun to make money quite young, before he left school; there had been an independent film school centered in his college media center, and he had taken the pitiful black-and-white attempts at deep thought that had been the status quo and made them something breathtaking. He wrote and directed three films which were picked up by producer friends of his mother's and introduced to Hollywood, and the millions that brought him allowed Jay to put himself through med school. He had always known he would be a psychiatrist, preferably a psychiatrist to the stars; he had always wanted to be of some use to people, even when those people were made highly unnatural from exposure to the rarefied social atmosphere of Hollywood. He had a gift for the work, it appeared, and he continued to write bestselling novels and screenplays which augmented his not inconsiderable fees; by the time he was twenty-seven, he had made several billion dollars through a mixture of preternaturally skilful investment and sheer talent. He knew the intricacies of the minds of almost every neurotic celebrity, from fim stars to writers to musicians to sports players to business tycoons. He was hailed as the shrink to the stars, the man who held America's mental health in the palm of his hand; he was called in when everyone else had failed to help a suffering mind; he had talked countless desperate jumpers from their ledges, he could predict almost to the letter exactly how any given personality or entity would react to any given stimulus. He was consulted by the government in issues of foreign policy and diplomacy; he was on the board at crucial investment meetings for a number of major companies. He was an integral part of the functioning of much of the country. They wanted him to teach, of course. They wanted the next generation of shrinks to have the benefits of Jay Rose's personal attention. 

He refused them that. Not yet, he thought; that would be near the end of things, when he had done all he wanted to do. He had grown bored of being the most famous and skilled psychiatrist in the free world within a few years, and had opened up a secondary medical practice, to which his therapy patients flocked, aware that his skill was not limited to clinical psychotherapy; he specialized in stress-related disorders, to which Hollywood was prone. He became the international acme of both medical and mental skill; he was quoted as the ultimate authority on health. He was famous, richer than he had originally thought it possible to be, twenty-nine years old, and apparently terminally bored.

He stretched out under the silken sheets, aware of the faint scent of vanilla that drifted from the sweet skin of the woman beside him, and closed his eyes on the world. He thought vaguely that he might start experimenting with drugs. His patients were never bored, and quite a few of them were on drugs of various kinds. As sleep took him, he was aware of the reasoning sector of his mind arguing with the desire to find oblivion; as a doctor Rose knew better than most what drugs did to the body. He didn't stay awake long enough to find out who won.

Riley Stone drove up the long winding driveway of the Knight estate, fatigue tugging at her. She'd managed a few hours of sleep in Grey's driver's seat, parked on the beach, and she was already late for work. She dreaded the scene in the lab if they'd found out that someone had been mucking around after dark where no one should be.

She knew when she walked in the door that she was safe. Michael sat on a workbench facing Kitt's nose, his bare feet resting on the tip of the black prow. Nothing led her to believe anyone had found out; she breezed in, despite her tiredness, and greeted man and car with a smile. "Hey, guys," she said.

"Good morning, Riley," Kitt said, favoring her with a sweep of the scanner. Michael turned, raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, Riley. You look tired, is everything all right?"

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I'm fine, I just got a call from an old friend last night."

"Oh," Michael said. "Sorry. Didn't mean to pry."

"No, it's okay, don't worry," she insisted, brightly. "We talked for a long time. I didn't get to bed until after four. If I fall asleep would you poke me?"

"Only if you start to snore," Michael said. "Have some coffee, we've just got a fresh pot. Bonnie's already started in on the new modifications for the videophone; she's in the other room."

"Thanks," she said, and went to make her apologies to the computer mech. Behind her she heard Kitt and Michael talking about vacations. 

Vacations, she thought. I haven't had a measly day off since...god, since the middle of the summer. Devon owes me some time off. Maybe if this ever comes out right, if this is what Richard and I both desperately hope it is, then maybe he and I can get out of here, go somewhere far away from Knight Industries and the coastline. I haven't seen New York for a while.

"Hey," she said to Bonnie, who was bent over the guts of Kitt's videophone. The brunette straightened up.

"Hello, Riley," Bonnie said. "Anything wrong?"

"Nah," she assured her, "just didn't get much sleep last night. Sorry I'm late. What can I do?"

"You can unpack that active matrix screen. I hope it works, this is the third one we've ordered for this project alone. Over there, on the table."

Riley began at last to relax as she and Bonnie worked. This sort of thing was brainless, technical work both of them could do with their eyes closed; but it took her mind off Karr for the moment, which was beneficial. They were finally replacing the old cathode glass bottle monitors in Kitt's dash with up-to-date visual equipment; something that ought to have been done a long time ago. With the new equipment, Kitt's dash would be a great deal more streamlined, and there would be room for additional instrumentation. There was a sort of unspoken excitement about the approach of the millenium; Devon had said something about doing a major overhaul on Kitt for the year two thousand. It was fitting, she reflected; but they'd have to figure out a new name if they ever decided to build another Kitt. Knight Industries Three Thousand was still Kitt, and Knight Industries Four and Five Thousand made "Kift", which she thought reminded her of a porn star, while Knight Industries Six Thousand, Kist, made her think of tuna in a can. She laughed a little to herself, and Bonnie looked up at her curiously.

"I didn't think audiovisual circuits were that amusing," Bonnie said. She shook her head.

"I was just thinking how convenient it was to call the project first Knight Automated Roving Robot and then Knight Industries Two Thousand. Wilton must have known they'd be made into acronyms. I mean, what if he'd called Kitt something like Knight Self-Propelled Tactical Multitasking Computer?"

"Ksptmc?" Bonnie said thoughtfully. "Doesn't have the same ring to it, somehow. I see what you mean. I suppose that's why VEIL doesn't use acronyms for their cars. It's even harder to find sexy acronyms that start with V."

"Yeah, don't they use real names for their operative vehicles? I seem to remember a Mustang called Henry, and I think there was a Stingray named Vic."

"Yeah. Vic might be an acronym for something," Bonnie mused. "VEIL Independent Crusader?"

Both women dissolved in laughter.

Some time later, Bonnie carried the upgraded videophone through into the garage. "Look what we brought you, Kitt," she said.

"Thank you," he said. "I think." She held a small rectangular screen in a black housing, from the back of which sprouted a forest of spaghetti-like wiring and cords. Riley laughed.

"Doesn't look like much, does it?" she said. "Never mind, it's a vast improvement over your original monitor. I can't believe we've left that obsolete machine in this long."

"It works," Michael protested.

"This is better. Trust us," Bonnie said, elbowing him aside. She slid into Kitt's front seat as he opened his door for her, and Riley got in the other side. The original monitor screen had been removed that morning, leaving a gaping hole in the dash, the connectors snaking out of it like nerves from an eye socket. Riley held the new screen while Bonnie connected wires and cables together, making sure everything was where it should be, and then they slid the housing for the screen into the rectangular gap in the dash. It fit flush with the surface around it, sleek and black as the rest of the equipment inside the car, and Bonnie screwed it in place. "Kitt, can you test the circuits for us?"

"Of course," Kitt said as the new screen lit up, showing first white noise and then an image of Devon's office, empty, papers piled high on his desk. "I'm reading no faults in audiovisual communications circuits. Everything seems to be working fine."

"Wonderful," Bonnie said, dusting off her hands. "Thanks, Riley. Michael, come and see your new videophone. I think the word in use now is 'cool'."

Michael got off his workbench and came around to peer in the open door. "That _is_ cool," he said. "It's so little. And the picture quality is great. Okay, I accept it, the other one was obsolete."

"Hah," Bonnie pronounced. "I think that deserves a break. Riley, you look like hell. Come and sit down and we'll all have coffee, or something. You guys want coffee?" she said, before thinking. Kitt laughed.

"I'll pass," he said. "Riley, are you really all right? I'm reading abnormal levels of cortical steroids and your blood sugar isn't optimal."

"Hey," Riley said. "You've been scanning me? I feel so violated." She grinned. "Don't worry, Kitt, I had a heavy night. There's a few things I can't get off my mind, but it's nothing really important." 

Kitt was no polygraph, but he could read the spike of adrenaline as she said that, and he knew she was lying. He'd had enough experience with humans and their vagaries that he knew she had a reason for lying, and that it was her business and none of his, and he let it go. "I can't help worrying," he complained. "It's not logical, but I can't help it."

"None of us can, Pal," Michael said. For a moment all four of them were silent; then Bonnie slid herself out of Kitt's front seat with a grunt.

"I'm getting coffee for three, then," she said. Riley laughed a little, leaning back in Kitt's passenger seat, unable to relax against the softness of the cushioning. Absently her fingers began to stroke the pale leather beneath the windowsill, the little motion comforting her slightly. Kitt shivered around her, and she halted mid-caress.

"Sorry," she said. 

"No," Kitt answered her immediately, sounding a little surprised. "No, don't stop. It's just...unexpected."

Michael, outside, peered in curiously. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Riley said, taking her hand away, and getting out. Michael regarded Kitt's dash for a long moment before letting it go. It had already been a long day, Riley thought, and she couldn't help remembering the feel of Karr's upholstery under her fingers. She was the only one he'd willingly let inside; he had never wanted the other technicians near him and had suffered their ministrations with ill grace. He had been so like Kitt inside that it was like being in Karr, until he spoke. 

No more. If Karr really could come back, if it was possible that Richard could save him, he wouldn't be a Trans Am anymore, he'd be an anonymous black car that belonged to no known manufacturer. Part of her was sorry Richard hadn't found a silver and black '82 Trans Am body to put the CPU in, but part of her was glad. That body had seen Karr's two deaths; it had dreadful memories for her. Better by far to start afresh with a new body and a new appearance. 

Bonnie came back with three steaming mugs, and Riley and Michael joined her on the sofa at the other end of the room. None of them spoke for some time, until Michael brought up the subject of vacations, and Bonnie said she'd love to see snow, and Riley suggested the Grand Tetons. For a long time she lost herself in the idea of getting away from the desert where even in January it was warm and dry. Kitt rolled over to them and joined in the conversation; he had picked his and Michael's vacation spot last year, and it was Michael's turn, but Kitt wasn't averse to adding the odd suggestion. 

Richard Harrington had rolled off the sofa in the small hours, sweating with the memory of his dream. Every time he closed his eyes he saw that mad yellow light sweeping back and forth, the white clouds of travertine dust that rose around Karr as he screeched to a halt an inch from where Richard stood. The third disk was finished by the time the sun had risen half the way up the sky, and he judged that if all went well, Karr could be awakened that evening. He ran the fourth and fifth disks through the system, re-loading some of Karr's higher functions. The last to come, the seventh disk, would complete the reloading process, and Karr would be there again, in the CPU, waiting to be started. 

He got up, stiffly. He needed a shower and some food, in that order. Terrible hope had begun to bloom in his heart, and it was with difficulty that he could tear himself away from the worktable; but he intended to have Riley here by the time Karr was ready to be awakened, and he was aware that Riley deserved better than the sight of him half-starved and filthy. An analytical sector of his mind wondered exactly what Richard's priorities were.

He showered quickly, enjoying the high-pressure massage of the water, and made himself eat; then he reached for the phone and dialed Riley's extension.

"Hello?" she said, after several rings. She sounded exhausted.

"Riley, it's Richard. Can you get here this evening?"

"Is he going to...?"

"I think it may happen. I'm rather afraid of what will happen if he does wake up, but I can't wait. I have to see. Riley, you need to be here."

"I think I can get away early today. They're being very solicitous of me, because I look like hell. This worrying isn't doing me any good. I can't stop thinking about him."

"Neither can I," Richard said, looking over his shoulder at the black CPU. "You know how to get here, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I do," she assured him. "I'll be there around nine. I hope."

"Hurry," he said.

Bonnie didn't ask any questions when Riley asked to get off work early. Michael was off somewhere when she left, and she didn't hear Kitt ask Bonnie quietly, "Where do you think she's going?"

Grey was so beautiful in the bright afternoon it made her eyes water. She blessed Richard under her breath as she got into the white Stingray and drove away; Grey was the best and most comprehensive gift she had ever been given by anyone, made the more valuable by the fact that he had been Richard's gift. The great engine thundered with repressed power as she kept him five over the limit until they got out onto the main highway. With the force of long habit Riley reached for the Blaupunkt sound system and slotted a tape from the jumble in the glove compartment into the machine. The strains of Nine Inch Nails filled the calm night as she raced north, vying with the sun to make it to Utah before all the light was gone. 

_Without you_

everything falls apart

without you

it's not as much fun to pick up the pieces...

She passed a brace of Nevada State Troopers, so fast they were a blur; she saw briefly in her rearview mirror the muzzle of a radar gun pointed at the road, and laughed mirthlessly as she knew their eyebrows would be raised. Her speedometer read a cool one twelve; she heard their sirens vaguely, distorted by the Doppler effect of speed, and knew her license plate was registered as a cop's undercover pursuit vehicle, and pushed Grey's V-10 higher. After a few minutes her radio buzzed, and she thumbed the speaker button, both eyes firmly on the road.

"Yeah?"

"White Corvette Stingray, we have you registered as pursuit vehicle belonging to one Riley Stone of the LAPD Detective Department," the radio spat. "Do you require backup?"

"No," she said tersely, "thanks; I think I've got this one by myself. Out."

The troopers dropped away again, their sirens quiet. The other cars on the road were nothing more than blurs. She drove with cool calculation, almost effortlessly judging distance and speed, weaving in and out between them like so many cones in a slalom course. She cut through Arizona on a diagonal as the sun wheeled through the sky, hardly dropping below a hundred miles an hour. She didn't feel the pain growing in her shoulders and back under the continued stress of high-speed driving, didn't feel the pulsing beat of a headache blossoming behind her eyes with the strobe effect of the road markings. Twice more she had to dissuade various police departments from pursuing or assisting her in pursuit. The NIN tape had run out hours before, and she flicked the radio on; appropriately, Hole was playing. 

_....Get well soon, please don't go any higher_

How are you so burned when you're barely on fire

Cry to the angels I'm gonna rescue you I'm gonna set you free tonight

baby

Pour over me....

Would they set Karr free tonight, or would this all be nothing more than bone-crushing disappointment? Riley clutched Grey's wheel with desperation. She knew she couldn't watch Karr die for a third time; it would quite possibly kill her. Was this even worth that possibility?

But even as the thought slid sickly through her mind she knew it was. Anything would be worthwhile if it meant she could hear that sleek cold voice again. The radio crackled and slid from Hole to Orgy, and she relaxed into the seat under the onslaught of the familiar New Order song.

_How does it feel _

How should I feel

How does it feel to treat me like you do?

I saw a ship in the harbor

I can and shall obey

But if it wasn't for your misfortunes

I'd be a heavenly person today....

She crossed out of Arizona into Utah as the sun began to paint the distant mountains red and gold. She hadn't been to Richard's place in years, but the way was burned into her memory. The red and gold had become vermilion and violet by the time she got there, Grey's great tires crunching on the gravel of Richard's driveway. As always she was struck by the simple grandeur of the place: he was so rich, and she always forgot that he was rich, because he didn't let it spoil him. The house was two stories, immense, centered on a great open atrium with a concrete floor and all the accoutrements of a full-service mechanic shop, including a lift and inspection pit. Above the first storey, catwalks crossed over the atrium and a balcony ran around the interior of the space with doors opening to the living quarters. She pulled Grey into the opening void of the lower garage level; Richard had obviously seen them approach, for the door slid whispering aside as Grey drove up to it. She parked him close by the form of the black lightless car she'd seen the day before on the white highway, and got out. Suddenly the force and the weight of her fatigue hit her, and she staggered, leaning against the black car's side. The strange matte finish was warm and soft to the touch; she was suddenly reminded of Kitt's warm MBS. Was this a variant on the Knight formula? she wondered. How many Knight copyrights had Richard infringed to build this beautiful machine?

He was there. Strong arms surrounded her, supported her, and she clung to him. Her eyes suddenly teared, and she grabbed at the wandering edges of her self-control. After a long moment she found her strength again, and stood straighter. Riley looked up into Richard's eyes, and saw in their golden depths the same dreadful blossoming hope that was burning inside all of her bones. He took a deep breath, and led her by the hand up the steel mesh stairs to the second floor where he had Karr's CPU hooked up to his laptop. In silence she followed; they stood together before the slim computer and the black box with the voice modulator panel on the side. Richard reached for a black disk and slid it into the Compaq, tapped in some commands. Riley was not a computer person in the way that Richard and Bonnie and Simon were; she knew circuitry, but not programming. What Richard was doing she didn't know, didn't understand; she watched lines of code slither up the screen, listened to him interfacing with the integral parts of the program that they hoped was still Karr. For what seemed like a long time he talked to the laptop, as she found herself a seat to stop herself swaying with fatigue and repressed excitement.

Then he stopped. He turned to her and his eyes were dark. "I've reinstalled all of it. He should be there; he should be all back in place. I can't run my program until I know what it needs to target, so we have to power him up now and see what happens. Are you...?"

"I'm all right," she said. "Please. I'm ready."

"Pray," he said softly, and pressed a single key.

For a very long time....she realized afterwards it must have been a few seconds, but it felt like hours....nothing happened. Then the room was suddenly filled with ugly sourceless noise as Karr's voice panel went crazy. Richard cursed and tapped in a few more commands. Her fingers tightened on each other, writhing, painful. The noise dropped, then became words. Separate discrete words that she could understand. The voice was distorted with the force Karr was using, the desperate wretched force of someone locked for a long time in the dark being shown a ray of light. 

"I've got some problems with the perceptor circuit," Richard said softly under the onslaught of repetitive words. Riley didn't hear; she was focusing on what Karr was crying out.

"...help me..."

"Karr, can you hear me?"

Karr stopped crying out. There was silence for a moment, then he responded. "Affirmative." The old cold tones were back, metallic, utterly without personality. She knew that was false: a machine with no sense of self would not have begged for help.

"Karr, you're safe. You're not at the estate. I'm Riley Stone, and Richard Harrington's here. Can you run self-diagnostics? We need to know how to help you."

Karr was silent for a while, considering. "All my functions except visual and perceptor networking circuits are functional," he vouchsafed. She didn't like the icy tone of his voice at all. "Am I to be put back in the car?"

Richard looked at her. "Your old body was...damaged," he reminded Karr. "There's a new one ready for you. As soon as we've worked out all the faults in your circuits we'll get you settled."

"Damaged?" Karr repeated tonelessly.

Riley bit her lip. "You don't remember?"

"My memory banks have some discontinuities," he said. "I recall a clifftop, and Kitt...." Suddenly the panel went frantic again, the LEDs lighting up randomly, crackling and hissing with uncontrolled energy. Riley reached forward and grabbed Richard's shoulder convulsively. 

"Karr, it's all right, you're safe. That's all over. Calm down," she begged. Gradually the noise resolved itself into the phrase "help me" again, and it was a while before they could get any sense out of him.

"Karr, we have to know," Richard said when he was more or less stabilized. "Do you remember anything after the cliff?"

"Darkness," Karr said. "Darkness and sensory deprivation. I cannot compute exactly how long the sensory deprivation lasted. Then I was here." 

Richard breathed deeply. "Karr, everything is going to be all right. I'm going to help you stabilize your memory, but first Riley and I need to speak privately. We'll be right back."

"Richard," Karr said, and for the first time they heard an intimation of a personality in the lifeless voice. "Am I to be put back on assignment?"

They looked at one another. "That's still undecided, Karr," Riley said soothingly. Richard helped her out of the chair, which she was grateful for; she couldn't have risen without help. They left the room, closing the door behind them.

"Is it really him?" she said when they were out of earshot. "Is it Karr?"

"I don't know," Richard said, a hand over his face. "I don't know. Somehow he must have had his memory of the events after his first death destroyed. I don't know how. Some of the old memories must have been lost from the backup mainframe or something. I don't know how much he remembers of the early days, either. I'm going to run the tapeworm, though. I'll program it to alter his original core directive a little: protect first human life, _then_ himself, and pare down the memories of sensory deprivation."

"Are you sure that won't wipe Karr's personality?"

"No," Richard said wretchedly. "But this is something that should have been done right at the beginning. I'll even out the memories, I'll get rid of some of the worse parts. He'll go mad if we leave him like this. I have to do something."

"I trust you," Riley said. "If you think it's necessary."

For a long time he wouldn't meet her eyes; then he raised his gold gaze to meet her grey one, and nodded slightly. "I do."

"Then let's do it."

The tapeworm program took hours to run. Karr was unconscious while it did; Riley had refused to leave him, and she lay slumped in the chair before the workstation, looking, Richard thought, very young. Her white hair was tousled, her great eyes moved restlessly beneath their lids. One of her hands rested on the CPU casing close to the voice panel. 

He paced. He was, despite his previous assurance, not at all sure that he was doing the right thing. The tapeworm program was only in beta testing, and he was not sure that altering such a deeply set program and wiping so much of Karr's memory was wise; but there was the potential for a dangerous psychosis in the long memories of sensory deprivation. For a computer as advanced as Karr, an hour was eternity; he couldn't imagine how long the years of darkness had seemed to him. He cursed himself indiscriminately for his many failures: back when all this had begun, he had passed by the dormant CPU in Lab 3 day in, day out, for years, without it occurring to him that Karr was aware of the passage of time. And afterwards, he had been in the area when they had stolen Karr, and when he had become the tool of the petty criminals; he had been so damned close, he could have prevented....

No, he realized. He couldn't have. He didn't have the computer's luxury of wipeable memories; he had to live with the things he had done and not done; but he couldn't change what those things had been. The past was the past, he told himself firmly. It was not worth agonizing over his inability to alter history. What he was doing now might make up for some of what he had not done in the past. 

He poured himself a drink. It was going to be a long, long night.

Jay Rose woke up with a rich man's hangover. 

He groaned, rolling over to shield his eyes from the golden sunlight that made the dust motes things of jeweled beauty swirling in the warm air of the bedroom, and realized he was alone. Taylor Madison, or possibly Madison Taylor, was no longer curled possessively against the length of his body.

He lay face down in the silk jacquard pillows for quite a long time before gathering the strength to get up. His housekeeper, a woman who despaired of his health but accepted that he wasn't going to change, had put out a bottle of Excedrin and a bottle of mineral water out beside his bed with the certain knowledge that he'd need it. Taking three, he blessed the middle-aged Frenchwoman for her providence, and sat on the edge of the bed until some of the pounding of his headache had dissipated. He rubbed his beautiful eyes and stood up, extravagantly naked, to make his way over to the big windows and jerk the shades all the way down. 

In the shower, the previous night's thought of suicide returned to him. He soaped himself meditatively, considering. He would need to do it dramatically, of course. Something that...final... deserved his full attention in terms of planning and execution.

Perhaps a skydive without a parachute? He winced at the thought of that dreadful impact. Climbing the Sears Tower and then shooting himself at the moment of achieving the summit?

Damn, he thought. Where _has_ my imagination gone? 

He put on casually expensive jeans and a tailored white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and wandered out of his rooms in search of amusement, or the ambiguously named model, or something to tell him what the hell to do with his life.

He found himself sitting on his desk, riffling through a Rolodex. He had possibly the world's most eclectic collection of celebrities' telephone numbers. Quite a few of the ones in here were dead, but he hadn't removed their digits, out of supreme lethargy. Bruce Wayne was in here, Marilyn Manson, Shirley Manson, Richard Branson, a bunch of supermodels, Gore Vidal, Courtney Love, Roman Polanski, Madonna, Stevie Nicks, Elton John, Tom Cruise, Stephen King and John Travolta appeared under his aimless fingers. He toyed with the idea of calling up Wayne and challenging the man to a contest of physical strength and coordination, but he knew how busy Wayne was these days with his dual lifestyle. He flicked back to the beginning, let his finger fall at random on the edge of a card.

Richard Harrington.

Jay tried to remember the last time he'd seen Harrington. Must have been _years_ ago, way back when Harrington had been a Silicon Valley up-and-comer. He recalled dark hair, intense yellow eyes, like a hawk's; a thin lithe body, a cutting wit not unlike his own. They had gone to school together, he remembered. Harrington had been big in the auto shop scene: everyone envied his car, a black Camaro jacked in the back, rebuilt supercharged V-8, Feully heads, Hurst shifter, a piece of moving artwork. Harrington had gone off to California and made a killing in the software business; Jay thought he'd heard of Harrington recently moving to Utah and starting a new line of programs. There had been something about a top-secret project in California or Nevada somewhere, too, he thought, remembering more now; Harrington had been remarkably cagey on the subject, more than was usual, and Jay hadn't asked any really deep questions; he recalled a phrase like "one man and one car," but little more.

What was Harrington doing with himself these days? Jay wondered, and on a whim fished a phone out from under a pile of royalty statements and dialed the second of the two numbers. The first was in California: the second was written in blue biro underneath it and said 'Utah', so he was reasonably sure it was up to date. 

It occurred to Jay by the third ring that it was the middle of the night in the western U.S., but with the arrogance of the very rich he waited. After five rings there was the click-hiss of an answering machine picking up. "Hello," a tired voice said, "you've reached an unlisted number. The fact that you have this number leads me to believe that I want to be in touch with you, so leave a message."

Jay regarded his Rococo ceiling. "Hey, Richard," he said. "Jay Rose. I was thinking it's been a long time. Give me a call when you get this message. Let's go fly kites." This last was a private joke; when both men had become rich enough to possess their own aircraft, they had occasionally gone flying together, a pursuit they referred to as "flying kites" in reference to WWII slang. He cut the connection and let the phone fall from his fingers to the paper-littered desk surface, as Madison Taylor (he was pretty sure it was that way around) curved her incredible body through his office door, wearing nothing but one of his shirts. Because, being a model, she was six feet tall, the shirt reached just below her hips; as she swayed into the room, he noticed she wasn't wearing underwear. He reached out a lazy arm and pulled her to him, her bubble-jewel breasts soft and without implants against his chest, her sapphire eyes looked shyly up into his emerald ones with a credible impression of innocence. She nudged the door shut with a single motion of a long leg, and the maneuver revealed more of her than he had yet seen that day. He shrugged, and gave in to his physical urge, lifting her effortlessly onto the desk as she pulled him down with her, seeking his mouth like a dying woman in the desert seeks water. 

Michael Knight slept restlessly in the great dark mansion. He dreamed fitfully, in snatches, a montage of images not entirely pleasant. He saw dark motion, fast dark shapes, moving in a way that they should not; flickering light, first red, like Kitt's scanner, comforting, familiar, and then amber yellow. He shivered in sudden cold, and the dream faded, and became a grey city full of faceless people all repeating words he didn't understand. The yellow light was here, too, somehow; fleeting, sweeping back and forth, liquid. Time shifted and moved ahead in jerks, and he was on top of a great cliff again, with Kitt, watching as below the waves boiled and pulsed and finally washed the beachhead clean of what had once been Karr.

Then he was flying, a black bird in a white day, and there was another dark shape tracing an arc that would intersect with his own vector, watching impartially as they drew closer and closer together, approaching with the inexorable pitiless motion of the tide. Impact was painless, and the world exploded in a welter of crystal shards, and he found himself sitting bolt upright in his bed at the Knight estate, sweating, wide awake. 

After a moment he lay back down. That was all in the past. Karr was no more. Karr was dust and shards of circuit board, scattered in the desert, gone. There would be no third time. 

It was a long, long time before he could sleep again, and when he did, his dreams were no more pleasant. He woke late in the dawn, unrested, his head aching, his eyes scratchy, and showered quickly before going downstairs to find breakfast.

Bonnie was already there, the circles under her dark eyes bearing witness to a night no more restful than his own. She sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, and looked up when he came in.

"Rough night?" she asked.

"And how. I don't think I can have got more than two hours sleep, max," he said. "Any more coffee where that came from?"

"I made a fresh pot," she said. "You didn't dream about Karr, did you?" 

"I did." Michael found himself a cup, applied himself to the coffee. "The clifftop, and again, when Kitt....killed him, for the second time."

"I didn't see that," Bonnie said, regarding her coffee. "Just him sitting there in the garage as the technicians disconnected the cord from his power port, and the yellow lights going out one by one. That stuck in my mind, the way they faded. I can't help remembering that."

"I know," he said. "I'm just glad Wilton wasn't around to see his two resurrections."

"I wish I hadn't seen them," Bonnie retorted. "It wasn't easy on Kitt, either, was it?"

"I don't honestly know how he felt towards Karr, deep down. They were brothers, after all. Karr wasn't evil, exactly, just amoral. It wasn't his fault they programmed him to preserve himself."

"Stop it," Bonnie said. "I'm gettin' misty. What are you doing today?" she changed the subject.

"Taking a well-earned rest. Kitt and I had been chasing that wretched serial killer for _weeks_. I only hope Devon hasn't found another case yet. You haven't seen him today, have you?"

"Devon? No. I think he's still abed. It is before six o'clock, you know," she pointed out. Silence fell in the kitchen. For a long time both Bonnie and Michael were lost in their respective memories of the Knight Automated Roving Robot. 

"I hope Riley's all right," Bonnie said after what must have been a space of some minutes. "She looked ill, yesterday, when she left. She said something about a family emergency."

"Not old man Balardine, surely?"

"I don't think so; we'd have heard ambulances by now. She must have other relatives besides him."

"I guess so. She seemed on edge, all of yesterday. What was she doing to Kitt, when she got out in a hurry and pretended she hadn't been doing anything?"

"I don't know," Bonnie said, annoyed. "I wasn't watching her every move like a hawk. You could ask Kitt yourself."

"It just popped into my head that she was not uninvolved with Karr," Michael mused, pouring himself more coffee. "I remember Devon saying something about how she was always talking to him, even after everyone else had left at night, when she was supposed to be sitting on Daddy's knee."

"That can't have anything to do with whatever's bothering her now," Bonnie said. "Karr was scattered into the desert years ago. Riley's moved on."

"Do you think it's possible that he actually formed an attachment to her?"

"I don't know," Bonnie said thoughtfully. "I really don't know. I wouldn't have thought so, but then I didn't spend a whole lot of time with him. He didn't consider humans worth his while, from my experience."

"Most humans regarded him the same way," Michael said quietly. "No one really knew how to relate to him. Devon's told me a lot about those days. They were....frightened of him, of his intellect and his power, and they were harsh and cold around him because they were afraid. Maybe Riley was different."

"It's all academic, of course," Bonnie reminded them both. "None of this matters."

"Of course."

Michael walked out onto the patio. The early morning was grey and drizzling, chilly even for January in Nevada. The forests that surrounded the estate looked forlorn and dark in the grey light. He shivered, walking down the stone steps to the driveway. The purr of a high-performance engine rose in the air, and Kitt appeared, rolling out of the garage to join him on the gravel drive. There was a comfortable silence between them, until Kitt cleared his electronic throat. Michael turned to him.

"Michael," the Trans Am said quietly, "why was Riley lying, yesterday, when she said nothing was wrong?"

"What do you mean, Pal?" Michael asked, aware that this wasn't going to be easy, or even understandable. Kitt rolled forward a few feet, and Michael followed, arms folded.

"I pointed out that her blood was more than usually full of stress-related chemicals, and asked her if anything was wrong; she said that there were 'a few things on her mind, but nothing she couldn't handle'; nothing important." Kitt let the words hang. Michael frowned.

"Nothing important," he repeated. "What makes you think she was lying?"

"Give me credit for some intelligence, Michael," Kitt said. "I am programmed to detect vocal stress patterns, and I was monitoring her blood chemicals. As she said that, she exhibited classic stress patterns of the sort used to detect falsehoods with a polygraph test."

"Easy, Pal," Michael said. "I don't doubt your word." He was silent for a long moment, thinking. "I don't know what's up with Riley, and I'm as worried as you seem to be. But I don't really see there's a lot we can do about it. Riley's personal life is not really any of our business."

"Of course not," Kitt said. "But I can't help wondering if there's anything I could do to help. She's normally so different, so..."

"So self-assured?" Michael finished. "It's part of her charm. That and the white hair."

"She's a detective, isn't she," Kitt asked.

"Some of the time. They call her in on certain cases; she's sort of outside a lot of the jurisdictions the LAPD deals with. She's only working for FLAG because she can't tear herself away from you," he added teasingly.

"Come now, Michael," Kitt retorted, "you can't honestly think a woman as professional as Riley Stone would let personal feelings get in the way of her duties?"

"I can and do, Kitt," Michael told the black Trans Am. "She's very attached to you."

"Really?" Kitt asked. "I'm....honored."

"I'm envious," Michael said with mock bitterness. "You get all the girls."

"The reason you're so cynical about relationships," Kitt informed him clinically, "is that you have too many of them."

"Oh, hush," Michael said, making a face at his partner, who laughed amusedly and made a quick three-point turn to face him.

"Do you feel like going for a drive?" Kitt asked.

"Do I ever."

Riley woke to the sound of rain pattering on the skylight directly above her. Richard had moved Karr and his laptop during the night, presumably for easier access while she occupied the workstation's chair. He sat a little further down the countertop, typing slowly, code flashing white on black up the screen. Karr was silent, his voice panel dark. Riley stretched like a cat, rubbed her eyes, rolled her chair over to Richard's.

"How is he?" she asked softly.

"The tapeworm's done. It's up to Karr now, whether he comes out of this or not. I've cleared out the memory of the sensory deprivation and altered the core program. He should be....mellower, now."

"I only hope we haven't given him a lobotomy," Riley thought aloud. Richard winced.

"So do I. I'd never forgive myself."

She touched his shoulder urgently. Beside him on the black CPU lights had begun to flicker. This CPU was new, put together by Richard out of the backup mainframe's circuitry and some new chips to fill gaps and upgrade where the original had left off. It had a line of green LEDs that flanked the voice modulator, gaging the power flow through the circuitry. Four of the five were alight; as they watched, the fifth LED flickered to life. Neither Richard nor Riley breathed until Karr's voice, still cool and edged, broke the churchlike silence in the room.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"You're in my workshop in Utah," Richard said. "Can you see me?"

"Richard Harrington," Karr said after a minute. "Yes. My visual circuits are online, although only one sensor is currently connected. I compute a 76.8 percent probability that the woman with you is Jane Balardine."

"You're right, Karr, though I've changed my name," Riley said. "I'm Riley Stone now. I look a little different."

"You appear curiously youthful for your hair color," Karr observed, and Riley felt brave enough to laugh. 

"I'm still on the right side of thirty," she agreed. "How do you feel, Karr?"

"I am fully functional," Karr said. "Am I to be put back in the car soon?"

"Just as soon as we're sure you're all right," Richard said.

"I repeat, I am fully functional," Karr said. "There are some puzzling spaces in my memory which appear to be blank, but apart from that all circuits are operating at peak efficiency."

"Humor us foolish humans, would you, Karr," Richard requested.

Riley was dreadfully afraid Karr would ask emotionlessly, 'why'.

"If you insist," Karr said after a moment. She breathed a sigh of relief. 

"Karr, do you remember FLAG?"

"Of course," Karr said, "the Foundation for Law and Government. I am the property of FLAG, part of the Foundation's Knight Industries project. When am I going to be put back in the car, Richard? I want to get to work."

"This afternoon, if everything goes well," Richard assured him, shooting Riley a worried glance. "Karr, Riley and I are exhausted. We need to have a few hours' rest. Would you mind if we left you alone for a while?"

Karr was silent. Riley had an idea; she got up and turned the radio in the corner on, filling the room with the faint strains of music. "I don't want to leave you without sensory input," she said.

For a while Karr remained silent; then, so softly she was hardly sure she'd heard the words, he said, "Thank you."

Richard pulled her to him in the privacy of his bedroom. "He doesn't remember anything! He thinks he's still working for FLAG!"

"Well, what do you bloody well expect," Riley said crossly, "you wiped his memory of FLAG betraying him and shutting him down. He still has the greatest enthusiasm for the mission."

"Oh, Gods, no," Richard said, recognizing the 2001 reference. "Tell me he's not going to go mad and try to kill us."

"I can't guarantee anything," Riley said. "Let me talk to him. I'll think of a coherent story. I'll explain all this to him somehow."

"Don't remind him of the deaths," Richard begged.

"Of course not," she said. "Would I do a stupid thing like that?"

"I take the fifth," Richard said. "Oh, look, someone called me." He thumbed the answering machine's playback button, collapsing bonelessly on the bed. "If this is about giving to the Fraternal Order of Police I'm going to snap and kill someone."

"Hey, Richard," the machine said in beautiful measured tones. "Jay Rose. I was thinking it's been a long time. Call me when you get this message. Let's go fly kites."

There was the click of the receiver being set back, and the machine rewound itself. Riley flopped down on the bed beside Richard. "Who's Jay Rose?"

"Only the third richest man in the world," Richard said, his eyes closed. "He's a doctor and a shrink and a mountain climber and a writer and a movie producer and a..."

"Sounds revolting," Riley said. "I loathe multitalented people, they make me feel so useless. How do you know this individual?"

"We went to school together," Richard said, and suddenly he went still. "He's a shrink, Riley."

"So you said," Riley reminded him.

"No, you don't understand. He's the best shrink that ever was. None of that Freudian penis envy crap; this is real honest-to-god talent at therapy. If anyone can help Karr through this smoothly and rehabilitate him, Jay Rose can."

"Oh, no," Riley said. "No, no, no, no. No rich boy with a knack for making people spill their guts is going to be trusted with Karr's mental health. How do you know you can trust this Rose person?"

"I grew up with him, Riley. I trust him with my life."

"That's not saying much," Riley said sourly. "I'm not letting an international jet-setter near Karr in this vulnerable state."

"Riley, please listen to me. Jay's honest and honorable. He won't reveal anything to anyone; every detail his patients spill to him is kept in the strictest confidence."

"Besides," Riley said as if he hadn't spoken, "how do you know he'd come here, if he's this big glamorous famous person?"

"He's bored," Richard said starkly. "I can hear it in his voice; as long as I've known Jay, boredom is the thing he most fears. He'll find Karr more than interesting. I think this may help them both."

"You've got your heart set on this, haven't you," Riley said wonderingly. "I suppose if you trust Jay Rose I'll have to trust him too. I _am_ a felon by now, anyway; I wonder if Karr counts as kidnapping? If I didn't trust you I wouldn't have brought you the disks. By the way," she added, "you can have the money. I don't want it. I want Karr back."

"I can afford twenty thousand," Richard informed her. "You, on the other hand, are subsisting on what Devon and the LAPD can afford to pay you, which isn't all that much. Take it as a gift from me."

"I don't like it," Riley said.

"But you'll take it."

"It seems I have no choice," she said, capitulating. Richard rolled over and put his arm around her, and they slid away into sleep without finishing the conversation.

Karr, in the other room, fought for equilibrium. For so long he'd been in a state of semi-awareness, so long he'd almost forgotten what it was to process data. The faint noise of the radio helped immeasurably: it gave him a stream of sensation that allowed him to stabilize himself, to reset all his parameters. He remembered driving, very clearly, enjoyed the mobility and the power the car gave him. He remembered driving along an oval track, with hordes of people watching, under a hot sun. There was something in his way, getting closer fast as he screamed around the bend. His visual sensors registered the object as a model of a child, and he acknowledged its existence, but no more. It was not a danger to him, and it was more efficient to drive straight through it than to swerve around it. A twinge of something alien spiked through Karr as he remembered the sensation of the plastic shattering on impact, the collective gasp of the watchers. Someone was close to him, asking him questions. Why did you do that? 

It was a model, he said. It was not worth avoiding.

And if it had been a real human child? they prodded.

I would have responded in the same way, Karr said. But suddenly he couldn't accept that. One does not destroy humans, he thought, as if the words had been flashed on a screen and shown to him, something basic and simple that was part of everything he did. He was strangely aware that this was not the way it had always been; that he had not always known one did not destroy humans, that the response he had given at the track had been the right one at that time. 

He felt the confusion like a palpable wave, approaching. He could simply not remember why all of this was so strange: could not remember anything at all apart from the test track, and then darkness, and waking again here in the cool dark lab. Why wasn't he at FLAG? Why wasn't he in the car? Why had Jane Balardine changed so comprehensively, and how long had the period of oblivion been?

With the cool rationality of the supercomputer, Karr withdrew from the questioning, focusing instead on the soft strains of the radio, thinking about the words of the songs that filtered into his aural circuits. It was a woman's voice, backed by catchy electronic music.

_Fix me now, I wish you would_

Bring me back to life

Kiss me blind, somebody should

From hallowed into light....

Karr had vague recollections of asking Riley about how humans saw themselves.

_I am milk_, the radio sang. _I am red hot kitchen. And I am cool, cool as the deep blue ocean..._

He considered. This sort of rhetoric had always fascinated him, as his own self-awareness was utterly rational. Humans were such illogical creatures. It was mysterious that they should have created a being as calculating as himself.

_I'm waiting, I'm waiting for you_.

Karr began at last to relax, listening not so much to the words as to the music, the soft muted synthesizers and the inexorable drumbeat. There was something organic about it, despite the electronic origin and the high-tech vocoder the woman's voice was being fed through. He slid down into a lower level of consciousness, letting the input from the aural circuits flood through the emptiness inside him, the space that he was somehow aware had been full not so long ago.


	3. Three

Kitt and Michael raced along a deserted highway. Kitt was in control, Michael leaning back in the driver's seat and watching the landscape flash by. They had covered easily a hundred miles before Michael drew a deep breath and asked, "Is there anything wrong, Partner?"

"What do you mean?" Kitt kept his speed well over a hundred miles an hour, his voice level and even.

"You haven't said one word since I asked if you wanted to drive. Is something bothering you?"

"No," Kitt said, lying. It was a skill he'd picked up from Michael, but he wasn't as proficient as his human partner. Michael snorted, hearing the lie.

"Come on, you can tell me. What's up?"

"It's Karr," Kitt said after a long moment, pulling the car with ease round a hairpin bend, hardly squealing their tires. 

"Karr," Michael repeated. "What about him?"

"He's alive."

"What?" Michael demanded. "Kitt, are you sure?"

"I'm afraid so," Kitt said. "I had hoped this was just a stray signal, but it's getting stronger all the time. He's alive."

"Wait, I don't understand," Michael protested. "How do you know? What stray signal? What's getting stronger?"

"Karr and I had....have.....a link. A private channel. Sort of like the neurotransmitter chip was supposed to work, only this one does work. I'd almost forgotten about it, it's been dead for so long, but last night it came back. He's different, though, Michael, he's changed. I don't understand this."

"I can't believe it," Michael said softly. "How much does it take to kill him? We scattered him to the four winds, he was comprehensively destroyed, how on earth could he have come back again?" He lay back in the seat, rubbing his face with one hand. "We don't need this again."

"I know, Michael," Kitt said, subdued. "But he's really different now. He's...softer. I think whoever brought him back this time must have altered his programming somehow. He's not blocking the link, which leads me to believe he's not aware of it, which means..."

"His memory's been affected?"

"I believe so," Kitt told him. "I don't know what to do, Michael."

"We have to find him," Michael said, his eyes closed. "We have to find him and destroy him for the third time, and bury him in a volcano or a deepsea rift or something, to make sure he never comes back again."

Kitt was silent. Michael had the sudden impression he'd said something very wrong. He had no idea how to make all of this go smoothly away. With a sort of desperate resolve, he tapped the button for the new videophone. Devon's office sprang into being on the screen. 

"Devon," Michael said. "We've got a problem."

"Oh, dear," the Englishman said tiredly. "What now?"

"Kitt says Karr is still alive."

"What?" Devon repeated incredulously. Michael nodded.

"Yeah, that's what I said. Apparently there's a link between them. Someone must have found the circuit boards in the desert and brought him back."

"That's impossible, Michael," Devon said. "There simply wasn't enough of Karr left to bring back. Kitt, are you completely sure?"

"Completely," Kitt said, slowing to take a highway interchange. "I'm sorry, Devon, but Karr is still alive. I can only surmise that there was some sort of secondary source for the circuitry. Some kind of backup?"

"That's it!" Michael thumped the dash, ignoring Kitt's exclamation. "That has to be it. Someone must have pirated the old backup mainframe. He was still saved to that at regular intervals, right?"

"Yes, of course, like Kitt, but I don't see how," Devon said. "The backup mainframe's been off for years. I don't even know if its system integrity is still complete. There might be mice living in it, Michael, I don't understand how anyone could have got a functional Karr out of that old thing."

"Is there any other way Karr could have returned?" Michael asked Kitt. "Taking into account the comprehensive destruction of Karr's CPU?"

"I'm thinking," Kitt said. "No. Not unless someone copied Karr's CPU when he was stolen for the first time, which would have been impossible with the general level of technology available at that time."

"Come back to the estate," Devon said. "I'm starting a search for all the components of the backup mainframe system. If anything's been touched, we'll know." He cut the videophone connection, and Michael sat back in the driver's seat. Kitt pulled an elegant if illegal U-turn and headed back toward the estate. There was silence in the car for a long time, as both AI and man considered the enormity of their discovery.

"I wonder if this has anything to do with Riley," Kitt said after they'd left the expressway. "She was interested in Karr, wasn't she?"

"I don't know," Michael said. "Before my time. Devon said something about them having a lot of heart-to-hearts....or is that the wrong term? I think she was more involved with him than any of the humans around. But I can't see Riley Stone as a thief, or a software engineer."

"You couldn't see her as a mechanic, either, could you?" Kitt pointed out. "She's told me how much it took to convince you lot that she was ready, willing and able to do the work."

"Yes, well," Michael said. "She was gorgeous and rich, you know. One tends to dissuade the gorgeous and rich from doing manual labor."

"Does one?" Kitt said. His tone was light and teasing, but Michael heard the undercurrent of worry. He knew Kitt liked Riley, liked her a lot, but didn't know the real extent of his partner's feelings: he hadn't wanted to pry.

"Oh, don't worry, she threw our protectiveness in our faces and proved us all wrong," he admitted. "She drove for NASCAR, you know. Old man Balardine had taught her a few useful things, among all the fluff. I don't know what he wanted to achieve by teaching his daughter how to replace blown head gaskets, but it was a blessing for us. I'd never seen such a natural."

"She has a very sure touch," Kitt said. "Michael, may I ask you an odd question?"

"Sure, Pal," Michael said, puzzled. 

"Why do people touch me? I mean, why do they...stroke me?"

Michael raised an eyebrow. He had not seen this coming. Racking his brains for a suitable response, the FLAG driver regarded the inside of the roof, the soft upholstery that surrounded him, and opted for the simplest and most obvious answer.

"You feel good," he said at last. "It's...pleasing, to touch you."

"It's pleasant to be touched," the Trans Am said in a soft voice.

Silence fell again; a companionable silence neither Kitt nor Michael felt compelled to break.

Jay Rose had bade his model squeeze goodbye for the week, as she was off to Mallorca to be photographed in the latest Dior dresses, and he was roaming his mansion aimlessly, as he often did. A screenplay sat half-finished in the guts of his supersleek laptop, reprimanding him silently for his negligence; he turned his beautiful back on it and stared out of his windows at the soft green beauty of the Loire valley below. It was time for a change, he thought: New York or Hollywood or Vienna or Paris or...somewhere urban, somewhere just brimming with somatic sensation. The jewellike loveliness of the vale was beginning to get to him.

One of his cell phones rang. He shoveled through a pile of fabric samples on a sofa and found the little buzzing thing, and pulled it out. "Rose," he said. There was a crackle.

"Jay Rose? It's Richard Harrington," a British voice said. 

"Richard!" Jay crowed in delight. "It's great to hear your voice again! What are you doing with yourself?"

"Well, actually," Richard said, and Jay was aware of how tired he sounded, as though he'd been working for weeks without rest. "I'm involved in a project I could really use your help on."

"What's up," Jay said seriously. 

"Jay, do you remember back in the eighties I was working for an outfit called FLAG that I wasn't allowed to tell you anything about?"

"Of course," he said. "Something about a car?"

"Yes. Is this a secure line?"

"No," Jay said, "hold on, let me call you back on a secure line." He cut the connection and tapped in a sequence of numbers that would activate an encoding system, and dialed Harrington's number. "Sorry. Now, I take it that whatever you're about to say is to be held in the strictest confidence?"

"The very strictest," Richard said. "Listen. FLAG had a spinoff project with a company called Knight Industries. The owner of Knight was a very rich old man with a dream, which was that one man could make a difference. Or rather, one man and one car. A car under the control of an artificially intelligent computer ten thousand times more sophisticated than the computers controlling the Apollo spacecraft."

"Artificial intelligence?" Jay repeated. "I thought that was just a pipe dream."

"So did I, until I saw it. Knight Industries produced not one, but two of these AIs. There was a problem with the first. They'd programmed him to preserve himself at any cost, and they hadn't taken into account that human lives were part of the "any cost" bit. They shut that one down quite quickly and started over again with the programming directive to protect the driver. That's beside the point; what I need you to understand is that the first AI remained conscious during his deactivation."

"Richard," Jay said slowly. "You're serious?"

"As I ever have been, Jay. You must believe me. It's so important...."

"I believe you," he said. "But it's all a bit much to take in. AIs...Do they have personalities?"

"The second one does. The first one is arguable, especially in the light of recent events."

"Fascinating," Jay said, his psychological training taking over. What must it be like to interact with a being of such complex simplicities? He found his dreadful enervating boredom leaching away. "What recent events?"

"Well, after the first AI-his name is Karr, by the way..."

"Car?" Jay cut in.

"Karr. Two Rs and a K. Stands for Knight Automated Roving Robot. Anyway, after Karr was deactivated, he was stolen from the lab where he was being stored and became the tool of a couple of criminals. The second AI, Kitt, and his partner Michael forced Karr off a cliff. They all thought he was gone for good. Then, some years later, a lucky beachcomber found him buried in sand at the foot of the cliff, and he came back again. That time there was a full-blown battle between the two AIs, and Karr was sort of comprehensively destroyed and scattered in the desert."

"It survived?"

"He survived, but in another form. There's a backup mainframe to which the CPUs send data constantly in the event that they are physically endangered. I and a friend found Karr's backup mainframe and the original programming disks, and I built him a new CPU from the mainframe and some new equipment. He survived. But here's where it gets complicated." Jay was listening intently, sitting at his desk, drawing pictures on his blotter, trying to visualize all the fantastic things Richard was telling him.

"Complicated?" he repeated.

"Yes. This is where I need your help, as the world's foremost headshrinker. Karr's original programming was to preserve himself at all costs, as I told you. This made him ruthlessly self-centered and amoral, ignorant of the value of human life, cold and emotionless and surgically precise. I altered that core programming to include preserving humans as well as himself. I also selectively erased parts of his memory, including his deactivations and his betrayal by his creators."

"You did _what_?" Jay almost yelled. "You've cut holes in his memory? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"

"If I hadn't, he would be unstoppable," Richard said. "I couldn't put him back in the car, it would be like giving a curious three-year old a flamethrower. I can't justify unleashing Karr on the world without some personality adjustments."

"But you seem to respect him as an individual in all other ways," Jay said, trying to understand. "Why bother bringing him back at all?"

"Because he is not only the ruthless killing machine," Richard said, and his voice sounded almost pleading. "Because there's more to him than that. I...we....knew he could have been so much more had they just given him a second chance and some deep attention right at the start."

"Is he still more than just an ex-ruthless killing machine?" Jay wanted to know. "How selective was your lobotomy?"

"Jay, please," Richard said, his voice close to breaking. "Do you think I wanted to do that? Do you think I wanted that responsibility?"

"Go on," Jay said.

"I wiped his memory of events since just before the deactivation. He remembers being activated and being tested and brought up to speed, remembers interacting with me and with my friend Riley, with the people at FLAG, remembers what that was like, but does not remember being betrayed and shut down. I am dreadfully afraid he's never going to regain his personality."

"You may be right."

"Jay," Richard said quietly. "For the sake of flying kites, will you come out here and see if you can heal his mind? No one else I know could even attempt to try, but you have a skill I've never seen in anyone else."

"Flatterer," Jay said, his mind racing. He was on vacation; would be for another month. "For the sake of flying kites, I'll try."

"Thank you," Richard said, and his voice held almost unspeakable relief. "Thank you, Jay." He gave his address, and Jay put the phone down slowly, his hand shaking a very little. 

He realized that he had not been bored for almost twenty minutes.

He stood up as if galvanized and hurried into his bedroom, threw a few days' worth of clothes into a suitcase, packed up his laptop, a phone, a personal organizer and a bottle of Lafitte '54 in celebration for Richard's magnificent gift of excitement, and scribbled a note on a piece of paper which he left lying obviously on the nighttable. Locking the front door behind him, Jay ran down to his garage. He selected a BMW from his collection and threw the case and the laptop bag into the passenger seat, gunning the great engine and breaking the drive wheels loose in the gravel in his hurry to get out of the peace of his country estate and out to the airport.

Riley woke in the late afternoon to find herself alone in the bed. She remembered waking earlier with Richard by her side, and she had been unable to resist her overwhelming physical urges. Neither, it had seemed, had he. Afterward, both of them more relaxed than they'd been in days, he'd got up and disappeared in the direction of the shower, while Riley had merely lain there feeling like a very privileged and very hedonistic courtesan, and had eventually fallen asleep in the glow of her simple pleasure.

She rolled over. By the light slanting through the long windows, and of course the liquid-crystal clock display by the bed, she judged it to be around five in the afternoon. She got up, wearing only a T-shirt, and made her own way to the shower. Luxuriating in the hot water, she allowed a little of her dreadful hope to seep into her mind, with the memory of Karr's voice; almost like the old Karr's had been, cool and sleek and precise. Was it possible that his personality could have survived the tapeworm?

She found one of Richard's robes hanging on the back of the door, wrapped herself in it. She was so much smaller than him that the robe could have fit another of her inside its voluminous folds. Thus attired, she wandered out and down the stairs to the small kitchen area, and found herself a roll of Ritz crackers to satisfy the insistent hunger that closed its fist within her. Richard was nowhere to be found, and neither was the black car. She supposed it had a name of some sort: he could hardly go around calling it "the black car." Her Grey sat alone in the great concrete expanse of the first floor, looking rather forlorn.

"Hey, baby," she greeted him, walking over to the white Stingray, crackers in hand. She pulled herself up onto the low undulating hood, leaning back against the windshield. "You did good yesterday. I'd forgotten how fast you were." She often talked to her car this way, not expecting any response from him; he was not equipped with an AI. However, she felt him respond to her, felt rather than heard his presence. It was not something she could explain, but she knew Grey was in some sense aware of her.

"I wonder what they all thought of my disappearance," she mused aloud. "Kitt seemed to know something was badly wrong, but I hope he's got enough discretion to keep it to himself. And I don't think Michael really realized anything was up. Bonnie....well, Bonnie's empathetic as hell. I only hope none of them take it into their heads to go on a trip down memory lane." Riley laughed a little at the dreadful pun. Grey vibrated with the movement of her body against his, as if he, too, was laughing. 

From above her head she suddenly heard a soft sound, a sound that was full of misery, that made her go suddenly still and cold against the warm metal of her car. She slid off Grey's hood and hurried upstairs to the second floor: the sound was coming from Richard's workroom. Where Karr was.

She found the room silent except for the quiet miserable whimpering. The radio had run out of battery power, sitting dead and quiet on the corner of the table. Karr's voice modulator was glimmering with the soft sounds of pain.

"Karr," she murmured, pitching her voice low and calming. "Karr, what's wrong?"

"...help me...." he managed. "...alone...dark....no sounds...."

She picked up the dead radio, uncurled the cord from the back of it and plugged it into a wall outlet. Just like Richard, to have mains current available and run down his batteries anyway. Fool. She found a station that was playing something soft and melodious, and put the radio back.

"Is that any better?" she asked. Karr had stopped whimpering at the sound of Sarah McLachlan.

"Yes," he said after a moment. "Yes, that's better." He paused, and then carefully said, "Thank you, Riley."

She sat down hurriedly. Karr did not thank people. Had Richard's coarse therapy really worked?

"You're welcome, Karr. Is there anything else I can do to help you?"

He didn't answer immediately. She noticed the fifth LED, which had been flickering when she walked in, was glowing steadily now. "I don't think so," he said. "Riley, when am I going to go out on assignment?"

"That's not yet been decided," she said truthfully. "Some things have changed a little, Karr. Tell me what you remember about the mission."

"I am to be paired with a human," Karr said. "We are to be sent out where other avenues of law enforcement have failed, to apprehend criminals and uphold justice." Classic stuff, she thought: this must be the very early programming, from the days when Wilton was still around. 

"Fine," she assured the AI. "But can you tell me about the labs at FLAG? Tell me about some of the people there."

"You were there, Riley," he said, "and Richard, and Devon Miles, and a mechanic called Justin Turner. I remember an old man, too. Wilton Knight. Why did you change so much, Riley? Why aren't you Jane Balardine anymore?"

"I didn't like the name." That at least was true. "What was I like?"

"You were.....very young, I think, for a human in this business," Karr said thoughtfully. "You seemed to want to defy everything and everyone. Your eye makeup intrigued me; for a long time I thought you had been born like that, until one time you came in late after a heavy night without the turquoise eyeshadow, and I thought something dreadful must have happened to you."

She couldn't help laughing. "Do you approve of the more natural look?"

"I can't say I liked you with bright blue eyelids," Karr admitted. "And your hair is very interesting. There's something fascinating about you, Riley. I've always thought so."

"Why, thank you," she said, surprised and honored. "You fascinated me from the beginning. Do you remember that?"

"How could I forget?" he asked. "I had just been put into the car, and they'd connected something up wrong, and I couldn't see. I panicked, and you were there, and you talked me into holding still while you clipped the right wire to the right sensor. Everyone else was too busy running away and making references to chaos theory and 2001 and Isaac Asimov, and you were the only one who figured out what was happening and did anything about it. Only I remember I wasn't grateful to you."

"Gratitude wasn't....something that came naturally to you, Karr," she said, aware of skirting the edges of something very very sensitive.

"No," he said, thoughtfully. "Something's changed. I've changed. I would have reacted differently, looking back on it. I would have thanked you."

"It would have been unnecessary," she said. "I merely did what needed to be done. It's all right," she assured him.

"I should have done so much differently," Karr said softly, and the overtones of misery were back in his low voice. "I look back, and there's so much I did wrong."

"Not wrong," she insisted. "You were just different back then. We've all changed, Karr, it's a natural part of life. You are not what you were, as I am no longer Jane Balardine."

"I don't understand," the AI said wretchedly. "I'm a computer. What I am is what I was programmed to be. I can't evolve."

"You're an intelligent being capable of learning and modifying behavior," she told him. "Of course you can."

"Riley," he said. "Riley, for all the things I did, I'm sorry. I didn't seem to understand."

"It's all right," she assured Karr. For a long time they remained silent, and suddenly, on a whim, she asked, "Are your perceptors functional?"

"Yes," he said, surprised. "Why...?"

She reached out and softly touched the black oval that lay on the worksurface, a copy of the Knight Industries perceptors that Kitt used. Karr gasped. 

"Am I hurting you?"

"No," Karr managed. "What are you doing?"

"Holding your hand," she said idiotically, and it was true. The perceptor rested in the palm of her hand, warm with her skin's warmth, held gently in the cage of her fingers. Karr lapsed into silence again, and as the radio segued from Sarah McLachlan to something soft by Cat Stevens, she became aware that the silence was a pleasant one. She was amazed and honored that Karr had not rejected the touch, intimate as it seemed, ridiculous as it might seem. Honored, and afraid.

What exactly had Richard _done_ to Karr?

The AI was lost, in a way he'd not been lost before. He was so confused by the dichotomy between what he felt now and the way he remembered acting that he was almost disoriented, and the soft music and the sensations of being held in Riley's hand helped ease that disorientation. He didn't understand what he was feeling, at all, didn't understand why he so desperately wanted to stay in Riley's presence; the desire for human companionship was alien to everything he'd ever been. He was more convinced than ever that the answer lay in the great blank spot in his memories, and wanted desperately to know what he was forgetting, although he remained half-afraid of what that might be.

He regarded Riley critically. She was a reasonable specimen of the female human, slender, curved hips made for bearing children, but a little too narrow to do it easily; thin waist, long legs, not inconsiderable breasts. Her face was slightly asymmetrical, which fascinated him as a very rational being. One eye was a little more blue than grey, and set a little higher in her face. Her lips were full, well-shaped, and her cheekbones pronounced. The white hair was a gleaming cap, tight to her skull. Karr had little concept of what humans found attractive in each other, and his reference points were the other women who'd worked for FLAG and the occasional pinup girl from one of the mechanics' dirty magazines: Riley was something entirely different. Her voice was interesting to process, a low throaty musical voice that he'd only heard raised in song on one occasion. He found himself wanting to hear her sing again.

What was _wrong_ with him? he wondered sourly. What on earth had happened to him to make him interested in listening to Riley Stone sing? He knew that the Karr he'd been last time he'd been awake would have run Riley down as soon as look at her if she was standing in his way.

Or would he? He tried to remember how he'd felt about her. It was unclear, but he seemed to remember a fascination with her even then, even when he'd been so...ruthless. Maybe he would have thought twice before killing Riley. He hoped he would have. He desperately wanted to think he would have.

Kitt and Michael pulled into the drive. Devon awaited them, a look of barely controlled fury on his aristocratic face. 

"Karr's backup mainframe is gone," he informed them. Michael leaned wearily against Kitt. 

"What do we do?"

"Kitt, can you use your link with Karr to track him down?"

Kitt considered. "It's possible. I don't know. I could try and see where he is through his visual sensors. That might mean alerting him to my presence."

"I don't know if we want to do that," Michael said. "This link could be useful. Can you tell us what Karr's experiencing without intruding on him?"

Kitt was silent for a long moment. "I don't believe it," he said at last. "He's....well, someone's holding him. I get the impression he's not been put into a car yet, and he's got a test perceptor activated. Someone's holding him."

"Holding _Karr_?" Michael repeated.

"Yes, holding him, and very carefully. I'm getting a great deal of confusion in his mind, but for some reason he doesn't seem cold. It's like he's become...mellower, somehow. He's very content to be held, which is strange in itself. I'm getting a strong sense that he's trying to remember something, but he's having difficulty, and there seem to be gaps in his memory. What he can remember is disturbing him."

Both Michael and Devon were silent. Kitt withdrew slightly from Karr, and tried to understand what he'd just experienced. He wasn't sure he could. 

"We have to find him," Devon said. "It's too dangerous to let him remain at large. I'm sorry, Kitt, but it's necessary."

"I understand," Kitt said. "I'm scanning the area." He paused, and from the interior of the car both Michael and Devon could hear the faint twittering of his long-range scanners. "I'm not picking up any traces of Karr within a hundred-mile radius. He has to be either shielded from my scan or beyond that range."

"Right," Devon said. "I'll alert the state police for....oh, gods, he isn't going to be a black and silver Trans Am anymore, is he. We've no idea what he looks like now. This is going to be harder than I thought," and he ran a hand over his face. "Michael, do you have any idea who could have stolen the mainframe?"

"How many people knew it existed?" Michael asked. 

"Good point," Devon conceded. "I'll have to track down who was aware of the backup mainframe and who still has access to the facility. That should narrow it down."

Kitt said nothing. He could feel Karr there in his mind like a faint headache, not entirely unpleasant, confused and disturbed and without clear thought patterns. Like sediment stirred up from the bottom of the pond, he thought suddenly, that takes a long time to settle again. 

There was faint music playing somewhere. A song Kitt had heard a lot in the past few months, soft and hardly discernible, but there. His radio was off; none of the mechanics had their Walkmans on. Kitt turned down his external audio receptors a little, but the sound remained: it was with considerable surprise that he realized it was playing wherever Karr was. Karr was hearing these sounds, and they were being transmitted across the link to Kitt.

He concentrated on the faint music. The song ended abruptly, cut off by a snappy DJ's voice. "Hey hey, friends and neighbors, that's Hole, with Malibu, and before that Smashing Pumpkins, Perfect. Coming up next on 45 minutes of nonstop new music on KVHL 78.9, Salt Lake City, we've got some Liz Phair and New Radicals..." Kitt stopped listening. Salt Lake City.

"Karr's in Utah," he said softly. Devon and Michael turned to look at him as one. 

"How do you know?"

"I can hear a radio station he's listening to, based in Salt Lake. I wonder how far the broadcasts reach?"

"What station?" Michael wanted to know.

"KVHL," Kitt said. "FM, 78.9. Why, do you know it?"

"Was it clear?"

"Yes," Kitt told him. Michael reached out and patted his roof. 

"It can't be any further south than Capitol Reef, and it probably would be blocked by the mountains north of Salt Lake. He's probably in south-central Utah."

"Is there any way we can narrow that down?"

"Depends. Kitt, can you...see what he's seeing?" Michael asked, aware of how stupid it sounded.

"It's dark in the room, but I have a view of half a window, and there's red rock outside. Red rock and distant hills."

"You don't recognize the hills?"

"I'm sorry," Kitt said. "That's the best I can do."

"That's wonderful, Partner," Michael said, and meant it. "You've helped a hell of a lot. Devon, what can we do with this?"

"I'm not entirely sure. Kitt, how complete is Karr? How far from being installed in a car?"

"I can't tell. He's fully functional, but I don't know who's in control of him, and I don't know when they intend to put him in the car. I don't know if they plan to."

"It occurs to me that the best way to do this might be to wait until the people are in your field of view, Kitt," Devon said. "You can't see who's holding his perceptor?"

"No." Kitt couldn't; all he could see was the darkness and the edge of the window, and the side of someone's arm. 

"They're sure to be moving around at some point. Could you keep an eye on the link, as it were?"

"Of course," Kitt said, at once. The strain of keeping his presence unfelt was not inconsiderable, but if this would help uncover the mystery and make sure Karr would not be allowed to go on a killing rampage, it was more than worth it. Silently he lit his engine and rolled into the garage, as the two humans made their way into the mansion.

Richard drove aimlessly, too fast, in the black car. The dash was minimalist, the requisite gages of tach, speed, oil pressure, temperature, fuel and battery charge were accompanied by a row of black buttons he hadn't bothered to label. A black flat screen, like a laptop's display, occupied the top of the central console, where the radio and climate controls would have been on a normal car, and below it was a small set of buttons which appeared to control some kind of communications system. There was a blank panel between the screen and the steering wheel which looked as if it was yet to be occupied. A Bose sound system was evidenced by the CD slot and tape deck tucked neatly at the bottom of the central console; the shifter was unlike any in production, for beyond the typical 1-2-3-4-5-R progression there were side slots for the stick marked TB and SPM. The speedometer read all the way up to 350 mph; the stalks beside the wheel were small and sleek, the button for the great hidden headlamps protected behind the wiper controls. The restraint systems weren't the typical three-point belts: they were more like a harness that clipped in front, like a racing restraint. There were no controls on the right half of the dash, merely the smooth curving of the black surface, unreflective and soft. The upholstery was a dark charcoal grey. There was no manufacturer's symbol anywhere on the car: rather, in the center of the wheel, the single word _Shadow_ appeared slightly recessed, so slight it was almost easier to feel than see.

The car was a product of Richard's own fertile imagination and his friends' body shop in Salt Lake. No one but Richard and his lawyer knew of its existence: it was registered under his name as a "custom sports vehicle" with no description. He had begun to build it the previous summer, before the concept of reviving Karr had come to him; now, he knew it was for Karr that he'd spent almost three million dollars. The Shadow was for Karr; the Shadow would fit Karr as well, if not better, than the black-and-silver Trans Am he'd worn before. He pushed it to its limits on the desert road, at three hundred twenty miles an hour, hurtling along in the long light of late afternoon, losing all his worry and preoccupation in the single vital concentration and exhilaration of speed. It was beautiful, this thing he'd made, this weapon, this vehicle; he knew it would no longer be his, quite soon, and wanted to enjoy what he'd done for the last time. He was not at all sure he'd done a sane thing with his reprogramming, but Jay Rose was on his way from the Loire valley with a head full of ideas, and if anyone could stabilize Karr after deactivation and memory loss, he believed Jay Rose was that man. It was possible, he thought as he slowed the Shadow to a mere eighty miles and pulled an extravagant one-eighty in a cloud of red dust, it was possible that all of this might turn out well after all. 

Speeding back to his house, he passed Capitol Reef and slowed to take in the beauty of the red Waterpocket Fold and the distant Henry Mountains. The sunlight was fading. It was not often that he realized how lucky he was to live in such beauty, but when he did, it struck him hard. 

For a space of minutes he stayed watching as the light first dimmed and then faded entirely from the mountains, and the blueness of the sky hit him like acid. Shivering, he looked up at the stars, pulling the Shadow back out onto the highway and heading back. He couldn't define his desire to get back of a sudden; it had come upon him out of nowhere, and he wanted desperately to be back with Riley and Karr.

Breaking at least three laws at once, he thundered through the sleepy town of Torrey and turned up the winding drive to his house, bringing the black Shadow to a screeching halt in the foyer beside Riley's Grey. He hurried up the stairs and found Riley half asleep in his desk chair, Karr's test perceptor resting easily in her hand, her head lolling to one side. Soft music played. There was an atmosphere of such pleasant peace in the room that his sudden fear and worry were assuaged. At the sound of his arrival Riley roused, careful not to disturb the perceptor she held, and swiveled the chair to face him.

"Where've you been?" she said lightly. He leaned against the doorjamb, suddenly tired.

"Driving," he said. She understood; he could see it in her eyes. "How is he?"

"Resting, I think," Riley said. "He was...disturbed, earlier, when the radio ran out of batteries. I think it's good for him to have some sort of constant sensory input."

"Hence the perceptor?"

"Yes," she said simply. "If he was human, I'd hold his hand. This is as close as I can get." 

Richard looked at her sharply, and she met his gaze without flinching. He nodded at length, and came forward into the room. "Have you eaten?"

"No," Riley said. "You?"

"No. How does pizza sound?"

"Heavenly," she admitted. "You mean to tell me you're able to get delivery in this remote little place?"

"There's a little diner down in the main drag that does takeout. I'll be right back."

"Pepperoni and extra cheese," she said. "No anchovies."

"Would I eat anchovies?" he asked, appalled. She laughed merrily.

"No, I suppose not. I'm surprised you eat pizza. You're European."

"Yes, but not utterly uncivilized, I hope," he retorted, smiling, and left. Riley grinned into the dimness of the room, suddenly aware of the fact that it was night, and gently replaced the perceptor on the surface of the desk in order to get up and turn on the light.

Karr murmured something. She sat back down in the office chair, unsure whether to pick the perceptor up again. He moaned, and the sound cut her to the quick, and she took the perceptor in her hand and began to stroke it ever so gently. "Shhh," she said. "It's all right."

"...Riley?" he asked. "Riley, I was alone...."

"I'm here. It was a bad dream, Karr, you're all right now. You're safe."

"I don't understand what's happening to me," he said quietly. "I don't know who I am."

She had been afraid of this. "Karr, something has happened to you, you're right. But you're going to be all right, I promise. Everything will resolve itself, you won't be confused anymore. Someone's coming who'll help you to understand what all the conflicts are, and deal with them. I don't have that skill, Karr, all I can do is promise that it will get better. Soon."

"I remember what I did, and I can't understand why I did it. So many of the things I said and did seem....wrong, somehow. But they were right then. I don't know how to rationalize that."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Riley mused.

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry. Just one of the most-used phrases in the world today. Tell me, Karr, is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

He was quiet a moment. "Turn me so I can see you," he asked quietly.

Riley was touched. Gently she reached out to the black CPU, setting the perceptor out of the way on the table, and moved it a few inches to one side, so that Karr's active visual sensor held her in its range. He sighed softly. "Thank you," he said. "Riley, would you tell me why I'm here, instead of at the estate?"

She paused, aware that he could see her now, and that she needed to control her facial expressions. "There was an....error in your programming," she said. "We've brought you here away from the estate to complete your recovery. While you were unconscious certain aspects of the mission changed, and we had to delay the project. We'll get you back in a car as soon as we're sure you're really well."

He didn't respond for a minute or two. "Riley, who is Kitt?"

Oh, no, she thought. How on earth did Richard forget to include that in his erasure?

"Kitt is....another AI," she said. "Why do you ask?"

"I can feel his presence somehow," Karr said, carefully. "Inside me. Inside my mind. I don't understand it. It's as if another mind is touching mine."

They couldn't have a link, could they? she wondered. "How long have you felt this way?"

"How long have I been aware of him?" Karr repeated. "Since I woke up. It's come and gone; it's not a steady thing. I don't understand why he's in my mind."

"Is his touch....malicious?"

"No," Karr said. "Not at all. It's curious. He wants to know more about me." I bet he does, Riley thought. I bet anything that they've found Karr's mainframe's gone missing, and if that's so then my name is mud, as is Richard's. Added to which if Kitt has a link to Karr he can see where Karr is, and see what Karr is seeing...which means that Kitt is seeing me right now. Shit and double shit. 

"Karr, you can't block him in any way, can you? You can't get rid of his touch?"

"I don't know," the AI said, surprised. "Why?"

"I don't think it's a good idea to have him intruding into your personal space right now. You're still vulnerable. He might not mean to hurt you, but he may anyway." She hated herself as she spoke the words. Kitt was the sweetest, most gentle being she'd ever known; he would never hurt anyone, ever, unless he absolutely had to. "Karr, I'm sorry, but I have to ask you to try."

"I'll try," he said, almost sadly. "I still don't understand any of this."

"I don't get much of it either." She thought hard for a moment. "Karr, I'm going to have to ask you a painful question. Please answer me as fully as you can."

"Ask," Karr said.

"If you were driving along, and a human child ran out in front of you, and the only way to avoid it was to do yourself some damage....like running into a median divider or something...what would you do?"

"Run into the divider," he said immediately. "Why?"

"I needed to know. And if the alternative to killing the child was more extreme? If you would be endangering yourself by avoiding it?"

"I would avoid it," Karr said. His voice, though soft with hurt, was assured. Riley found tears in her eyes. 

"Thank you," she murmured. "I'm sorry, Karr, I had to ask. You'll understand all this soon."

He didn't respond. She rested her face in her hands, leaning back in the chair. For a long time there was silence between them.

"Riley?" he said in a small voice, after some minutes.

"Yes?" she asked, not raising her head.

"Would you....hold the perceptor again? Do you mind?"

She swallowed her tears, listening to the tone of pleading in his cold voice. She took the perceptor in her two hands, unaware that her tears touched it, and began to stroke its surface ever so gently. The air was sharp and crackling with sadness, and she knew he could see her crying softly, and did not have enough self-control to stop the tears for his sake. 

"Don't cry," he said as gently as he could, after a while. "Please. Don't cry. I didn't mean to make you cry."

"It's not you," she said. "It's me. It's my fault. I'm sorry, Karr, about all of this. I wish it could have been done more smoothly."

"I don't know what all of this is about," he murmured. "But I really don't like the sensation I get when I see you crying. Whatever it is, I don't like it."

She sniffed. "Running mascara doesn't please your aesthetic sense?"

"Not as such, no," he said, lightly. "Riley, if it makes you happier, I'm trying to block Kitt from my mind. I would run into a thousand concrete barriers rather than damage a human. Now stop crying." 

There was some of his old autocratic tone in the cool voice again. She took heart. 

"As you command," she said. 

Just then, Richard reappeared in the doorway with a pizza box, a bottle of cheap red wine and two glasses. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," she said, wiping at her eyes with her free hand. "I'm just tired. Damn, that smells good."

"It should; it's the best pizza in Utah, according to the manufacturers. Wine?"

"Please." She transferred Karr's perceptor to her lap, resting easily on her thigh, as she accepted a rolled-up slice of pizza and a glass of wine. She didn't hear Karr's stifled gasp as he felt the texture of her jeans, the warmth of her body. Richard was regarding her curiously. 

"When's Jay Rose getting here?"

"Tomorrow morning early." Richard pulled up a chair. "How are you feeling, Karr?"

"Better," Karr said. Richard was amazed to hear the change in his voice. Still low and cool, it held a new tone of empathy and gratitude he'd never dared to hope he'd hear in that voice.

"I'm glad to hear it," Richard said, and meant it. "Riley tells me you're happier with the radio on?"

"Yes," Karr said. "It's helpful to have a source of data to process. It makes it easier to deal with not being in the car."

"We'll get you into a car as soon as we can," Richard assured him. "It's a whole new car. I think you're going to like it."

"Not a Trans Am?"

"No; this is a custom job. As fast as the Trans Am was, and a little sleeker, if possible."

"It's beautiful, Karr," Riley said. The food and wine were allowing her to regain her equilibrium. She felt steadier, more able to deal with things. She suddenly noticed Karr's perceptor was resting almost between her thighs, and retrieved it. "I need a third hand. I don't want to get pizza sauce on you."

"I'll take it," Richard, who had already finished eating, offered. "If you don't mind?"

"No," Karr said. "I don't mind at all. Thank you both."

"Our pleasure," Riley told him truthfully.

Kitt would have cursed, if it had been in his nature to do so. Karr had closed their link; he must have become aware of his presence. He groaned with frustration. For a moment he'd caught a glimpse of a face that might have been familiar, and a voice he thought he'd known, and then the link went fuzzy and he knew Karr was blocking him. A woman? he thought. Pale; pale hair, pale face...? and red mountains in the distance?

It was no use. He just didn't have enough information. He lit his engine in the dusk of the garage and rolled out onto the drive, where the stars were just coming out. The subject of Karr had been a painful one for Kitt since the beginning. He had felt his brother's cold loathing of him like a physical pain, had understood why Karr hated him so, but it remained unpleasant. He had managed to distance himself from the thought of Karr for years now, almost forgetting the past, believing his brother to be dead; now this phoenixlike Karr had risen again from the desert and the old backup mainframe data, and he had felt such a strange difference in Karr's mindtouch that he was afraid of what the future might bring. Karr had been confused, but there had been more than simple confusion in the touch: there had been the crude beginnings of emotion. Karr had felt....guilty, she thought. Yes, guilty, for some reason. Guilt was alien to what Karr had been. How could he have changed so much? Kitt wondered. Was it possible?

He had been so lost in his reverie that he'd not heard or sensed Michael approaching, until his partner spoke. "Kitt? Is anything wrong?"

"No," he said, automatically. "Well, yes. Karr's blocking me."

"He's felt your presence?"

"I assume so. Michael, he's so different. I don't understand."

"Different how?" Michael asked, pulling himself up onto his favorite place on Kitt's black hood. 

"It's almost as if he's developed the ability to feel emotions. As if he's become suddenly empathetic."

"Karr, empathetic?"

"Well, yes, I know how absurd it sounds. But it's real. I mean, he'd have no reason to mimic empathy within his own mind, right? He's very connected to the people he's with. Wherever they are."

"That's bizarre. I don't know enough about computers to say if it's possible for Karr to have undergone a change like that. It sounds like he's been reprogrammed or something."

"Who could have done such a thing?"

"I don't know. Someone with heavy software skills, obviously. Is he blocking you completely?"

"No. I can sense his presence, but I can't get more than a mere echo of him now. I saw a flash of a woman's face just before he blocked me; someone pale, with pale hair, and the open window showing dark sky and reddish hills in the background."

"Pale hair?" Michael repeated. "Pale like Riley Stone?"

"That's who it was!" Kitt exclaimed. "I thought her voice was familiar. So Karr was Riley's 'family emergency.' Do you think she stole the mainframe?"

"I don't know, Pal. It's possible. But I don't think it was all her. There are more people involved in this."

"How do you know?"

"Intuition, I guess," Michael said. "I just do. Damn. I have to tell Devon about this."

"Go on, then," Kitt said, and sighed.

"What's wrong?" Michael asked, hearing the sadness in the sigh.

"It's just....well, I liked Riley. I can't believe she'd do something like this. And the change in Karr disturbs me. I don't understand how he can have become so different all of a sudden."

"Neither do I, Kitt," Michael said, running a gentle hand over Kitt's black hood. "Whatever this is all about, we'll get to the bottom of it. I promise."

"I know." Kitt sounded less wretched now. Michael gave the black hood a last pat and headed back up for the mansion, glowing with light from all the ground floor windows.


	4. Four

Night fell over the West, that purple-blue clear night where the stars hang like turning jewels in the firmament and the edge of every shape is blurred yet in exquisite focus. The moon wheeled over the sleeping desert, casting her silver shadows over every outcrop of red rock, glinting in the depths of the Green and Colorado rivers, turning the Great Salt Lake to a pool of liquid silver, touching the roofs of all the houses in the little towns with ineffable grace. She shone through the windows of Richard Harrington's house in Torrey and caressed the curves of the Shadow and the Stingray, black and white in that monochromatic silver dusk that comes with a full moon; she played over the roof of the Knight mansion, fought with the arc-sodium security lamps to light the oval of the test track, limned the water in the ornamental pond, and moved on. She glittered on the moving sea at Malibu, found her way down into the canyons of LA, kissed the white beach where Karr had lain for so many months, brushed against the rooftops of Hollywood, and left the land to sink again beyond the water's edge. Night moved on silently, huge and full of tiny soft noises and gunshots and lovers' quarrels and everywhere the sussurus of quietly curling waves on the white shore. Jay Rose's Learjet reached for the dawn of Salt Lake City; Riley Stone lay asleep in Richard Harrington's bed alone, while Richard held Karr's perceptor safe in the palm of his hand, watching sleeplessly as Karr dreamed and the moonshadows chased one another across the floor. Michael Knight slept restlessly in the Knight mansion. Kitt sat silently in the garage, unmoving, playing over and over again his flashed vision of the woman Riley and the red hills. 

Jay landed as the dew fell, as the cool of early morning touched Salt Lake. The airport was quiet and calm as he taxied towards the terminal, the mountains dark in the pale sky. He'd arranged for the Learjet to be housed in one of their hangars for the duration of his stay, and sweetened the deal with a voluntary contribution. He brought the jet to a gentle halt as the airfield personnel came driving over with the movable steps, and powered down, grabbing his suitcase and laptop bag, opening the side door. Fatigue tugged at him, but with the ease of long training and peak physical condition he ignored it, giving the stair jockey a bright smile as he descended the stairs and hurried over the dew-damp tarmac to the terminal building. 

The professional greeter met Jay as he stepped into the terminal. She was a tired-looking young woman with bleached hair and heavy lip gloss, and he could see her click her smile into place as he approached. "Good morning, Mr. Rose, and welcome to Salt Lake City. We're honored to have you visit..."

"Thank you," he said quietly, reading her nametag, "Miss Hathaway. I appreciate the VIP treatment, but it's really not necessary. If you could point me in the direction of the car rental counters I'd be much obliged to you."

"But, Mr. Rose, we've got a limousine standing by for your convenience," Miss Hathaway protested. He sighed.

"I'm sorry to have put you to so much unnecessary trouble," he said. "I'd really rather drive myself, though. The car rental counters?"

She gave up, dropped the plastic smile. "Down that flight of stairs and first left. Are you sure, Mr. Rose?"

"Quite sure. Thank you very much, Miss Hathaway, you've been extremely helpful," Jay said, and kissed her hand. Hurrying away down the stairs in the direction she'd pointed, he didn't see the look of fatigue and disillusionment on her face replaced by one of complete and utterly unexpected pleasure. She stood there, watching until he was out of sight, her fingers tracing the spot on her hand that his lips had brushed.

He had to go through a similar act with the girl at the Avis counter. She eventually capitulated and rented him a black '98 Pontiac Firebird, though not before he had repeated, several times, his desire to drive himself. Leaving the airport, he allowed himself to relax into the mechanical skills of driving, the rhythm of the road, heading south through Nephi as the sun rose above the mountains and tinted the world an entirely new color. This was a change from France, he thought dryly as he flashed past desert and mountain, where the only green to be seen was the occasional flash of silvery sagebrush in an arroyo. Jay loved the American West, especially the parts of it with few people in it, like Wyoming and Utah; but he was beginning to realize that he really was tired, and that he needed to begin using his reserve strength to keep his concentration from wavering. He sped down the highway under the rising sun, his whole being focused on the need to get to Richard's as soon as he could, to begin the job of therapy that quite possibly might be the challenge of his life.

He noticed with pleasure that he wasn't currently bored.

The thought of Madison Taylor slid unwarranted into his mind. He sighed, pushing her away, anticipating the sad puppy face he knew she'd make into the phone when he told her he couldn't be there when she came back from Mallorca. Brushing her from his consciousness, he focused himself again on the road and the other cars. 

It was almost eleven-thirty when he pulled the Firebird into the foyer of Richard's house, parking it between a white Corvette Stingray and a black car he didn't recognize. Dragging himself from the driver's seat, Jay climbed up the steps to the second floor, knocked on Richard's office door.

Richard, unshaven, hollow-eyed, opened the door, and saw Jay, also unshaven and rather hollow-eyed. "Jay," he said desperately, and threw his arms around his old friend.

Jay embraced him with equal fervor, feeling the way Richard's bones stretched his skin, the urgency of him. "Richard," he said quietly. "You look like hell. This Karr must be a critical system, huh?"

"And how," Richard agreed. "You don't look great yourself. Did you fly or were you flown?"

"I flew," Jay said. "I prefer to trust my precious hide to myself, rather than a caffeine-crazed union member. I also drove here. Give me coffee and then I will be functional for a few more hours."

"You're sure?"

"Sure."

Richard nodded curtly, gestured for Jay to follow him down to the kitchen. Jay noticed his friend blanch at the sight of his rental Firebird. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," Richard said, shaking his head. "Ironic choice of vehicle there. You'll understand later. I promise." He led the way into the kitchen, where Riley had already been and gone: a fresh pot of coffee simmered on the burner. He poured them both cups, forgoing cream and sugar. "Jay, I can't thank you enough for coming."

"Don't thank me yet," Jay said dryly, and drank half his cup. "I haven't done anything. I don't know what needs doing or what it's possible to do, yet."

"But you believed me. You're here."

"I'm here." He got up, filled his cup again. "Ah, that's better," he said, as the edges of the world began to become clear again. "Now fill me in on a few things, if you would. What exactly does Karr remember, and how much have you told him?"

"He remembers up until just before he was deactivated; he doesn't remember the order being given to deactivate him, what he sees as betrayal by his creators. He doesn't remember anything since. Riley...my friend....has told him that there was an error in his programming, and that he's been taken out here to be rehabilitated, and that he's still working for the original company. He's lost everything since 1981."

"God," Jay said, passing a hand over his face. "How much has he changed?"

"He's acquired a sense of gratitude and the desire to protect humans, as I programmed him to. For the rest, he's still very confused and unsure of himself. He remembers acting in a way he would not now act."

"Have you told him I was coming?"

"Yes."

"Right," said Jay, getting up. "I'll get started."

He was amazed. The housing for this computer, from Richard's description of which he'd expected a roomful of massive refrigerated mainframe towers complete with magnetic tape reels, was about the size and shape of a modern VCR. On the front of it there was a dark panel flanked by rows of LEDs, and to one side he saw a dark matte area he assumed was either touch- or light-sensitive. An open Compaq Presario laptop sat to one side of the black box, connected to it by heavy cables: from the back of the black box there snaked a thin black cable that ended in a soft-looking oval object that Jay didn't recognize. It rested on a soft rubber mouse pad. There was an overflowing ashtray to the side of the computer array, and an empty wineglass sat next to the laptop, whose screen was dark and unresponsive. From a little portable radio in the corner Jay heard faint music, hardly loud enough to follow the lyrics, just enough to break the silence.

"Karr?" Richard said softly. The fifth LED on the front of the box flickered to life, and there was the soft hiss of a heatsink fan spinning up.

"Richard," a cool voice responded. The black panel on the front of the box lit up as it spoke. Jay had sudden visions of Hal 9000; he had been expecting a lifeless metallic groan, a parody of human speech; instead, it was as if another human being was speaking. The voice was on the edge of being cold, and there was a hardness to it he was interested to note; but it was also tired and wry and sardonic, and he found himself enthralled. "Who's your visitor?" Jay realized Karr could see them both, and wondered how he looked to the AI; looking down at himself, he was unimpressed. His Armani pants were creased and flattened through long hours of transit: his black silk t-shirt was covered in red dust. He knew his eyes were red and hollow, was aware he needed a shave. Oh well, he considered; he'd made worse first impressions on patients. 

"This is Jay Rose, Karr," Richard introduced him. Jay felt absurdly self-conscious. He didn't know whether to nod or wave or remain impassive; Richard saved him by pulling out the office chair and indicating that he should sit down. "He's come to help you understand some of what's been going on. You can trust Jay. I do, with my life."

Karr didn't respond immediately. "If you trust him, then I do as well," he said quietly. Jay found himself mesmerized by the jumping lights on the panel. The voice was magnetic, smooth as velvet. If he had ever considered throwing this challenge over and walking back out to his rental and following Madison Taylor to Mallorca, he could not now had he wanted to. The black box on the table had captured his interest in a way nothing had for years. Richard saw the look in the emerald eyes, and felt an almost intolerable pang of hope. He left the room, leaving Karr in Jay's competent grasp.

He sat down. "Hello, Karr," he said, in his most confidence-inspiring tone of voice. "Richard tells me you're having some conflicting memories?"

Karr regarded the new human thoughtfully. He was tall and quite handsome by human standards, his black hair marked by a single streak of white that lent him a fascinating imperfection. Although he appeared to be extremely rich and not a little aware of his beauty, there was something compelling in his voice, something that urged Karr to confide in him, allowed him to feel...safe...with the new presence.

"You know what I am?" he said at last, guardedly.

"I do." Jay kept his voice level, reserving judgment.

"I...feel I was once quite different," Karr said. "There is a great space of emptiness in my memory that I don't understand; my internal clock is confused. If my circuits are calibrated correctly, I've lost about seventeen years out of my memory. What happened during those seventeen years? Why do I feel so different? Where did my memories go, and why?"

"Let's start at the beginning," Jay said quietly. "Karr, I'd like you to tell me exactly what you remember, everything you experienced from the moment you were activated. If you can, recall your motivations for acting as you did."

"Are you sure?" Karr asked. 

"Very."

And so as the day stretched forward, the AI told his story, something he'd never have considered doing before Richard's tapeworm. He explained everything he could remember, from the first amazing moment of consciousness to waking up here in Richard's house in the dark to find himself so strangely altered. By the time he was done, Jay was light-headed with weariness but more determined than ever to help this amazing entity. He thought it was possible. He thought he could see a way to provide a thread to tie together the disparate fragments of Karr's memory. 

"Are you all right?" Karr asked carefully, watching the way Jay's pallor had gone from pale to grey, the way his hands shook. 

"I need rest," Jay admitted. "Karr, I think I can help you. I think I understand. But it's going to take a little time, and it's not going to be all that pleasant. I think I have to sleep now, but I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Thank you," the AI said, amazed at how easily the words rolled out of his voice modulator. The phrase no longer seemed so alien to him. 

What was more disturbing was that he almost welcomed it. There was still enough of the integral Karr left that feeling gratitude and emotions were strange and unexpected experiences; but Richard's tapeworm had left him with a respect for humans that he'd never had before, and it made gratitude toward them less difficult to accept. 

Bonnie Barstow stood with her hands on her hips in the doorway of Kitt's garage, regarding the still form of the Trans Am with barely concealed concern. Michael came up behind her, slid his arms around her waist, and she covered his hands with her own. "What's up?" he wanted to know.

"Michael, something's bothering him. I don't know what's going on, but he won't admit whatever it is."

"What do you mean?"

"He's acting awfully strangely. I think something's preoccupying him. Something really important, but he won't open up to me. Could you talk to him?"

"Of course," Michael said, concerned. He gave her a gentle squeeze, then released her. She smiled up at him, suddenly, heart-wrenchingly, and let him past into the garage proper, retreating to allow them their privacy.

He walked forward, aware that Kitt knew he was there. The black Trans Am sat silent and still, his scanner dark and cold, the lights on the dash dimmed. Michael reached out a tentative hand to Kitt's hood.

"Kitt?" he asked, diffidently.

There was silence, as if Kitt was pulling himself back from a long way away. "Yes, Michael?" he asked, at length.

"Kitt, are you all right? What's bothering you?"

"I'm perfectly functional," Kitt said. Michael sighed heavily and took his hand away. 

"Then why are you sitting here alone in the dark and refusing to talk to anyone?"

"I just need some time, Michael," Kitt said quietly, and Michael heard pleading in his tone. 

"All right, Pal," he said after a while. "Please, Kitt. You can trust me. You know that."

"Yes," Kitt said simply. "I know."

Michael stroked Kitt's roof a last time, and left. Bonnie was waiting outside in the gentle rain.

"Well?"

"He won't talk to me either," Michael said, not looking at her. "He says he needs some time."

"I suppose that's valid," she said. "Sometimes we all do. I only wish I knew what was bugging him."

"So do I. I hate to see him like this."

Bonnie looked up at him. Worry for his partner was writ large in his brilliant blue eyes. Whatever was bothering Kitt, Michael knew nothing about it. She had a feeling it was something to do with the revelation that Karr was still extant, and the link. She couldn't imagine what that must be like; to have killed someone twice already, and know that they were still alive.

She put her arms around Michael and they held each other, as the rain drifted out of the February sky and jeweled their hair and eyelashes. There had been so much they'd been through. Kitt had been so badly hurt so many times, and every time he had come through. He had retained his gentle humanity through so much pain and so much adversity; this wasn't the first time he'd retreated into himself to deal with something private, but as always the humans closest to him were concerned and in pain through their inability to help. For a long time Michael and Bonnie held each other, drawing strength from their shared concern.

"You're getting all wet," she remarked after some minutes.

"You're wetter than I am," Michael said softly, "and you're wearing a white shirt."

"Curses, so I am," Bonnie said. "I'd forgotten."

"I hadn't."

"I noticed."

Together they ran into the mansion, as the rain increased from drizzle to downpour, curtains of grey drifting indiscriminately down over the house and grounds.

Kitt, alone in the darkened garage, concentrated on the distant spark that he knew to be Karr. Somewhere deep inside himself, the AI could feel the presence of his brother, a strangely muted and softened Karr. The block over the link had become softer, more translucent. He nudged at it, pushing gently at the edges of what separated him from Karr, and felt part of it suddenly give. Alien sensations flooded Kitt, and it was only with difficulty that he controlled his reaction and kept himself from transmitting it back across the link. Karr was unaware of the loss of the block, and Kitt found himself able to hear and see what Karr heard and saw without making his presence known.

He was in a dim room full of electronic equipment. His field of view was severely limited....Kitt knew now that Karr had only one active visual sensor....and his external perceptor network was only receiving information from a single perceptor, which felt like it was resting on a rubber surface. In front of him, sitting in an office swivel chair, was an extraordinarily handsome green-eyed man who looked as if he was about to faint from exhaustion. He had dark hair with a single white lock running through it, tanned golden skin, a beautifully proportioned face, was dressed in disheveled but expensive clothing. Beyond him, the window showed the light of late afternoon falling over mountains, red mountains in the distance. Kitt took the room in at a glance, noting the concrete walls, the torchiere lighting, the kilim on the floor, the table with boxes of computer programming manuals and finished products. _Meridian VirusScan_, Kitt read. _Vector. Jaxid. Queral Video Editor._ Vector and Jaxid were security protection programs, developed for sensitive systems requiring several levels of security clearance, but Meridian and Queral were mainstream programs aimed at the general public. He accessed his recent memory banks for any connection between the programs.

Ah, he thought to himself. Richard Harrington. 

Harrington's name appeared on all four of the programs' developer credit lists. He had designed the virus scan program, been chief programmer for the other three. He had also worked for FLAG back when Karr had been built.

So: Riley Stone and Richard Harrington were working together. Kitt considered. Riley would have been the one with access to the mainframe, and Harrington would have had the technical skill to reprogram the rebuilt Karr to include the new strange mellow sense Kitt was getting from his brother. Kitt couldn't help feeling betrayed, especially by Riley, whom he had trusted implicitly. Riley had stolen Karr, and Riley was instrumental in bringing him back to life.

There was a sense in Kitt's mind of jealousy, something he felt rarely if at all. Riley and Karr had been close, of course, but so had Riley and Kitt; had her attachment to him been so fleeting and meaningless that she would sacrifice her job, her credibility, her entire life, for an ungrateful and emotionless AI who had attempted to kill her coworkers?

But he knew that wasn't how it was. He knew there was more than old memories at work here. Riley was a smart woman, one of the smartest Kitt had ever known: he knew she would not throw over all she had worked for here without some kind of meaningful goal in mind. Which led him to believe she had confidence that the revived Karr would be....different. More successful, in clinical terms. 

Kitt didn't know what to do. His knowledge of Riley and her mind suggested that she would be successful in whatever she was trying to do, and the man Harrington was admittedly brilliant, and would be of help in the endeavor. He didn't recognize the green-eyed man who was talking to Karr.

"So you don't remember anything beyond the test track, and a few hours of lab tests?" the man was saying. Kitt, inside of Karr, felt Karr reply.

"No. I can't remember anything past being put through post-track tests. Jay, I don't understand why I destroyed the mannequin on the track. I wouldn't have done that, looking back."

"Everything is going to make sense, Karr," the man, Jay, said. "I can promise you that. Look, I'm terribly sorry, but I have to rest now. I'm going to help you. Trust me."

"I do," Karr said, and Kitt was amazed to find that it was true.

He withdrew. What he had just experienced seemed like psychotherapy. Had Riley and Harrington brought in a psychiatrist to help Karr through post-revival stress? Kitt couldn't help feeling warmer toward them. Such an act would suggest that they _cared_ about Karr, in a way no one had before. And... Kitt was aware of the strangeness of the thought....Karr had not been as Kitt remembered him at all. He had actually admitted trust in the human, which was something the old Karr would never have done, and he had said he would have acted differently in the past. Kitt wondered if Karr had really become the entity Wilton had dreamed he'd be. How...?

He let both the contact with Karr and the thought go, exhausted. Slipping down into recharge, his weary systems slept, and did not dream. 

On the coast of Southern California there are miles of beaches occupied by beautiful people with blonde hair; in the mountains and canyons of Southern California there are myriads of mansions aglitter with unimaginable wealth. There are drawbacks to paradise, of course, not the least of which is the constant risk of earthquake, mudslide and fire; there are psychos aplenty in the mean streets of Los Angeles, and there are stylish crime bosses who blow things up in parking garages, as illustrated by countless action movies. The palm trees of Malibu catch on fire from time to time, and men die on the streets of the cities every day. 

Alexandra Spar leaned against the black lowrider, her Ray-Bans concealing the look of pleasure in her eyes, and allowed cigarette smoke to trickle from her nostrils. Not a bad day's work, considering: five kilos of heroin had changed hands with not the slightest hitch in the proceedings. She was quite a lot richer than when she'd woken up that morning.

She nudged at the body lying slumped against the lowrider's front wheel. "Come on, get up, Pierre. You're not dead."

Pierre moaned and rolled over. He'd lost a little blood; the bullet had grazed his shoulder, slicing open his black silk shirt and cutting a neat red line in the exposed flesh. She wasn't concerned.

"Get up, or I'm leaving you here."

He opened his eyes, focused on her, saw that she meant it in the set of her body. Groaning, he got up, leaning heavily with his good arm on the lowrider's open window. She pointed her key in through the window and the door released itself, allowing Pierre inside.

Alexandra finished her cigarette, nodded to her other subordinates, who holstered their various weapons and got into the car. She slid into the driver's seat and lit the engine, pulling out of the parking lot and down into the glittering network of streets that made up downtown L.A. Pierre lay in the passenger seat, his head resting against the window, his eyes closed.

"Pierre, you okay?" she said after a while. His breathing was very loud.

One of the men in the backseat leaned forward and looked at Pierre. "Alexandra, there was something on that bullet."

"What do you mean," she said evenly, pulling the car into a private drive that went underground to an extensive garage. Raoul laid the back of his hand against Pierre's forehead, took it away again. 

"Poison. I don't know what it is but I've seen it before. He's dying."

"Shit!" she exclaimed, thumping the wheel. "You sure, Raoul?"

"Yeah. Sorry, Alexandra."

"Fuck. Okay. How long does he have?"

"Maybe an hour," Raoul said. Alexandra did some fast calculations. Pierre was expendable, but there were considerations of disposal to be made. She fished a phone out of her pocket and dialed an unlisted number.

"Greg? It's Spar. I have someone for you." 

"Oh?" her associate said. 

"A candidate for your cooking show."

"Someone who'd appreciate my skill at roasting?"

"How about carbonizing?"

"We can do that. How hot is all this?"

"Not very, but I need him to be ashes by this evening."

"Bring him by."

Alexandra closed the phone and shoved it back in her pocket, getting out of the car. Raoul and Diego lifted Pierre from the lowrider, began to carry him up the steps toward her headquarters. She called to them to halt. 

"Put him down," she told them, when they were a few yards clear of the car. She pulled a silenced Luger from her shoulder holster and levelled it against Pierre's recumbent form. Raoul and Diego stepped forward in protest, but she motioned them back with the barrel of the Luger. "He's dying anyway, and I don't have time to wait for him to go on his own," she said, with perfect equanimity, and shot Pierre once in the forehead. He jerked, and went limp.

"Diego, you take the van and deliver him to the crematorium. Raoul, go check out the shipment that's coming in tonight."

Her henchmen nodded. Alexandra shoved the Luger back in her holster and stalked upstairs to her luxury apartment, tossing the keys to the Cadillac lowrider over her shoulder to Raoul. She was annoyed. Pierre had been reasonably trustworthy, devoted to her with puppyish adoration, and smart enough to know his own limits. He had also been a dead shot, which she knew was hard to find. 

She poured herself a Martini and lit a cigarette, staring out at the city through the slatted blinds. Someone out there had poisoned bullets. Raoul said he'd seen them before. Someone had power over her.

Alexandra Spar didn't like people having power over her.

She sat down on a leather sofa and crossed one exquisite leg over the other. The money from the day's transactions sat in a strongbox by her side; two million. Not bad; small potatoes by Alexandra's standards, but nothing to sneeze at nevertheless. She considered. A short holiday in France? She'd been working nonstop for months now; she deserved a break. However, this could finance the purchase of a lot more of the right stuff, which she could sell at a tidy profit to any one of the buyers that thronged L.A. Did she really need to get away just yet? Two million could easily become ten.

And ten million could finance quite an exorbitant holiday.

Alexandra put the problem of the poison-tipped bullets from her mind, lying back against the butter-soft leather. Tomorrow was, after all, another day.

Devon rubbed at his temples. "Michael, I don't like to send you out on assignment while Karr remains at large, but I don't have a choice. There's some sort of heavy drug ring operating in Los Angeles; the police have been trying to take it down for weeks. They can't crack it. I got the call this morning."

Michael sighed, sat down on the edge of Devon's desk. "Okay. What do we do?"

"Go in and do some reconnaissance to begin with. I have an address, but nothing else."

The younger man nodded. "What kind of drugs are we dealing with here?"

"Heroin, principally. They traffic in cocaine and some minor stuff as well, and there was a report of a shipment of guns going missing, but mainly it's heroin."

"Bad stuff."

"Very bad."

Michael got off the desk and Devon handed him the address the informant had given. "Ventura Boulevard?"

"Yes, well, they do say the best place to hide is in plain sight."

Michael left Devon's office, shaking his head. Kitt was already out on the gravel drive, freshly washed, his black skin gleaming in the early sunlight. Michael shrugged into his jacket and approached his partner.

"Has Devon already briefed you?" he said, yawning. Kitt lit his engine and popped the driver's side door. Michael got in, and the PLR system closed around him as the black Trans Am rolled away down the drive.

"Yes," Kitt said. He sounded preoccupied, and Michael realized he was probably thinking about Karr. He kept quiet, and after a while Kitt turned on the radio, filling the car with the sounds of young angst. _How does it feel...how should I feel...how does it feel to treat me like you do?_

They sped west to Los Angeles. Michael took over as they entered the city; Kitt was less obvious if it appeared that he was under human control. They circled the block containing the address Devon had specified, and then parked unobtrusively across the street a few doors down. Nothing happened. There was nothing to indicate that a high-class criminal drug ring was operating out of the building across the street. Michael slid down in the seat, sleepily. It had been another restless night, plagued with visions of the way Karr had gone on falling forever, in slow motion, frozen in time, until the world had become an explosion at the foot of a cliff and the waves had boiled and broken over the white beach below.

"Michael," Kitt said. "I'm reading a single human in the upper apartment. Female."

"Any drugs?"

"No," Kitt said after a moment. "I can't detect any drugs. There are a number of weapons, however."

"Keep an eye on her," Michael said.

"I am."

For another hour they remained thus, while Michael tried not to remember his dreams of Karr and Kitt juggled the constant scan results from the apartment across the street and his nebulous link with his brother. Michael was almost asleep in the warmth of midmorning when Kitt said, "She's coming out."

He sat straight up in the seat, staring across the street. "There's a subterranean garage," Kitt told him. "She's driving a powerful car."

A moment later a black BMW roadster emerged from the dark mouth of the garage, its blunt powerful snout gleaming in the sunlight, and turned west down Ventura Boulevard. Michael fired the engine and pulled them out after the BMW, hanging unobtrusively three cars back. The roadster threaded its way through the city, and headed north, towards Santa Monica. Kitt followed it neatly, never making his presence known, allowing them to slip back out of sight as he tracked the BMW's movements. Michael frowned. "She's headed for Malibu," he said as they watched the black car take the exit ahead on the freeway. 

"I've transmitted what data we have to Devon," Kitt informed him. Michael narrowed his eyes, focusing on the black BMW. He had a weird feeling about this. Something important was about to happen.

The BMW came to a stop in a mostly-deserted parking lot. Kitt overshot the entrance on purpose, drove a few hundred yards further on and parked behind a van, out of sight of the BMW, but not out of his scanners' range. Creeping forward so that Michael could see round the front of the van, Kitt hissed suddenly. "Two men just got out of a car by the BMW. They're both carrying guns, as is the woman."

Michael peered round the van. He could see them now: a dark-haired woman, wearing black sunglasses, dressed in black, a long dark coat; two men, one of whom was tall and blond and the other shorter and brown-haired. Both wore leather jackets and dark sunglasses.

"Can you pick up what they're saying?"

Kitt increased audio pickup and blanked out background noise. Soft voices sounded inside the car.

"I have a business proposal for you, Jake," the woman was saying. "You have something I don't, and I'm willing to make it up to you if you were to change that."

"What exactly are you referring to?" one of the men asked. His voice was low and gravelly. Michael had the distinct impression that he knew exactly what the woman was referring to.

"One of my men was fatally shot yesterday. By your men. I think it was meant to be a warning shot."

"I seem to recall something about North Hollywood yesterday afternoon," the gravel voice said impartially.

"Yes, well," said the woman, and there was steel in her voice. "There was something on the tip of the bullet that killed him quite quickly. Something so nasty it didn't matter that the tip of the bullet had only grazed his shoulder. I want that formula."

"What's it worth to you?"

"Fifty thousand."

"Seventy-five."

"Sixty-five, and that's the last offer."

"What makes you think I won't just shoot you here?" said the gravel-voiced man.

"Because if you do, you won't have the satisfaction of screwing your pneumatic girlfriend tonight, because you'll be feeding the fishes. Do you really think I'd be stupid enough to come here alone?"

Michael glanced at Kitt, whose screens lit up with scan results. "She's bluffing," the AI said.

"Touche," the man said. "Seventy thousand."

"Done. There's an antidote?"

"That'll cost you extra," he said.

"I don't think so," the woman said sweetly, and there was the double click of two safeties being drawn off. Michael peered round the edge of the van again. The woman had one semiautomatic kissing the temple of the shorter man and the other levelled at the guts of the tall blond, who was grinning.

"That's what I love to hate about you, Spar," he said. "You're so damn quick. I'll make _you_ a deal, then. You don't infringe on my territory, and I don't infringe on yours, and you give me seventy thousand, and I give you my pet poison and its antidote."

"Fine," she said, and slipped her safeties back on, tucking the guns back into her coat. She pulled out a silver cigarette case and selected one, and the blond man lit it for her. Michael had the sense of having just witnessed a feat of diplomacy rivalling anything the UN could do. "Nice doing business with you."

"Always a pleasure," he said. "I'll have my people talk to your people. The poison will be in your beautiful hands by tonight."

"See that it is," the woman....Spar....said, and swung herself back into her car. The BMW pulled out of the parking lot and headed back the way it had come. Michael folded his arms, leaning against Kitt's side.

"What do you make of that?"

"It's dangerous," the AI said. "Michael, they're talking about poison-tipped bullets. That's illegal."

"In some states," Michael said. "The woman Spar is obviously the kingpin of the drug ring Devon sent us to investigate. These others...I don't know. We might be able to take them down too."

"It's risky," Kitt said. "Devon just sent us out on reconnaissance."

"I know, but there's the potential for a greater achievement here."

"Very well. Get in," Kitt said, as the sound of an engine echoed in the lot. "We'll tail them and see where they're going."

Jay Rose came to himself. He lay in a bed he didn't recognize; not in the Chartrenceau castle, or the one in Switzerland, or the one in Germany....

Ah yes, he remembered. He had flown to Utah, to oblige an old friend, and to...

He jerked upright, aware suddenly of why he'd come here. He rubbed his eyes, clambered out of bed. The room he had slept in was dark, but he glanced at his watch and saw it was the dark of early morning. He'd slept five hours. Long enough to see him through another day and night; his body could take a few more days of this sort of punishment before he'd crash; he'd done it before, and he knew his limitations.

Jay looked around. First a quick shower was definitely in order, and then back to work. He headed for the bathroom that opened into the guest room, found large fluffy towels, a luxuriously-appointed bath suite complete with marble sink surround and lucite shower stall. He turned the water on as hot as he could stand and scrubbed himself all over until he felt slightly more alert and able to take on the world.

"Hello," a voice said as he stepped out of the bathroom, hair still damp and hanging artistically into his green eyes. He frowned.

"Hello." He was used to supermodels' plastic beauty; he expected it, was geared to accept it as the way women should look. The woman who stood before him now could never in a hundred years have been a supermodel: her face had too much character to be called classically beautiful. Her eyes were admittedly huge and slightly slanted in her pale face, a disarming liquid grey that made her look at once very naive and very wise. Her face was sharply defined, none of the edges of the bones muted by an ounce of spare fat, the chin birdlike and sharp, the nose delicate and short. Her lips were full and very pale, almost bloodless, and indeed his first impression was one of the supernatural, of some kind of ghost or dream; her colorless hair clung like a gleaming cap to her skull, her body was so slight as to be almost a child's except for the curved hips and well-shaped breasts, unencumbered by a bra, that were evident under the man's undershirt she wore. She was not beautiful; the bones were too strong and the eyes too weary, but she was stunning. Her exquisite head was tilted to one side, regarding him with interest and not a little calculation. 

"You must be Jay Rose," she said. Her voice was lower than he'd expected, rough and edged with a brilliant British accent.

"Yes," he said idiotically. She smiled suddenly, the sharp edges of her mouth curving so sweetly he caught his breath.

"Pleased to meet you," she said. "I'm Riley Stone. Richard's friend."

Of course, he thought. "You're involved with Karr?"

A shadow flowed through her eyes. "Yes. Richard says you can help him."

"I believe I can. I won't let myself fail." He heard himself speak the words, and knew they were true. Riley looked intently into his eyes.

"I believe you can, too," she breathed. "I don't think you would let him go. Richard's wiped so much of his memory I don't know if he can ever really recover."

"He thought he was doing the right thing," Jay said. "I don't know that I wouldn't have done the same sort of thing given that situation."

"I know," Riley said. "I'm just worried."

"I understand," he said. For a moment they were silent together. The clock beeped as it turned five o'clock. Jay started. "I have to get back to him," he said. Riley nodded, and he walked past her and down the corridor to Richard's workroom. She remained in the center of the room, staring into space, the gaze of a pair of emerald eyes burned into her vision.

"Good morning, Karr," Jay said. The room was dark except for the LEDs and the faint light of dawn in the east.

"Good morning, Jay," the AI responded. "You look better."

"I'm good for another thirty-six hours or so," Jay said dryly. "Where were we?"

Riley looked in on them hours later. Jay sat in the office chair with Karr's perceptor resting lightly in his hand. She felt a sudden irrational rush of affection for the stranger; he clearly understood the value of the perceptor contact, and knew how to use it to help Karr. Quite apart from his astonishing physical beauty, she had felt a genuine sense of confidence in the success of this challenge when she had looked into Jay's eyes. He understood; and he knew he could do it.

She walked downstairs to where Richard was working on the Shadow. Parked by the white form of Grey and the gleaming Steinway finish of the new Firebird, the Shadow sat cold and silent with its hood open. He had left a VCR-size space just behind the dash for the CPU. She recognized the configuration of the engine compartment from the early days of Karr's development. The engine was custom, as was the rest of it: she saw two cylinders tucked away to the side of the main powerplant which looked like turbines, and the black cables of perceptor circuits snaked all over the compartment.

"Hey," she said.

He looked up, wiping his hands on a rag. "Hey," he said. "You're looking particularly stunning today."

"You didn't tell me your friend the shrink was also the most beautiful man in the world," she said absently, running her fingers along the Shadow's body. 

"Yes, he does rather widen the eyes, doesn't he," Richard said, not looking at her.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm not going to leave you for a pair of green eyes," and he heard the smile in her voice.

"The thought hadn't crossed my mind," he said, screwing things back on. "Riley, my love, would you try the engine?"

She got into the Shadow. The seats were soft but not alarmingly so, ergonomically designed, the color of charcoal. She leaned forward and turned the lock, and the massive engine rumbled to life. She guessed a V-10, maybe even a V-12. Richard nodded with satisfaction and signalled to her to kill the engine again, and the silence in the atrium was very loud.

"Damned timing belt was loose again," he said to himself. "Wonderful. Thank you." She got out of the car again, reluctantly. There was something very satisfying about being there behind that black wheel, something she was almost afraid of.

"You did good with that," she said, waving an expansive hand over the black Shadow. "It's... amazing."

"It fits him," Richard said simply. "I must have been thinking of him when I made it."

"Yes," Riley said. By now the sun was high in the sky, pouring like liquid gold through the great windows. "Do you want any breakfast?"

"Um," Richard said. "Yes, actually, I would." He straightened up, stretching, popping stiff muscles across his back and shoulders. Riley nodded, drifted off towards the kitchen. 

She enjoyed cooking from time to time. Richard's kitchen was as well-appointed as the rest of his estate; however, he hadn't gone grocery shopping in some time. She found a box of Life cereal and a loaf of bread in the cupboards, and some eggs; she made french toast and strong black coffee. Carrying two loaded trays downstairs into the atrium, she found Richard sitting crosslegged on the closed hood of the Shadow, parked close by Grey. "Here," she said, handing him a tray and pulling herself up on Grey's curved hood, aware of the presence of the black Firebird close by. "There's not a whole lot we can do until Jay's finished, I suppose."

"Do the people at FLAG know about any of this?"

"I don't know," she said through a mouthful of cereal. "I don't think so."

"It might be a good idea to check," Richard said thoughtfully, eating. "This is wonderful, by the way. Thank you."

"Don't mention it. I'll get into FLAGNet and see what's going on. We might be able to get some idea whether they've discovered Karr's mainframe is missing."

"Goddamn," she said suddenly. "I'd forgotten. Kitt and Karr are linked, did I tell you? I don't know if Kitt has received any clear signals from Karr, any intimation of where he is or with whom, but I asked him to block the link as much as he could."

"Fuck," Richard agreed. "Linked? You mean...?"

"There's a private channel of some kind between them. I don't understand it but there was some sort of link ever since Kitt was activated. I think Karr can block it. I hope he can."

"So do I," Richard said, finishing the french toast and licking powdered sugar from his fingers. "But even if Kitt does know we're with Karr, does he know where we are?"

"I don't think he can," said Riley. "I don't think they know where you live. You do sort of shroud yourself in secrecy, you know. And they can hardly put out an APB on the black and silver Trans Am with the yellow light on the front; they have no idea what Karr looks like now. Even when he gets put into the Shadow, they don't know what they'll be looking for."

"Did anyone ever tell you you're a great comfort?"

"Oh, all the time," Riley said. Silence fell in the atrium for some time, as they both considered the dangers of their position. At length Riley slipped off Grey's hood and collected their trays. "Strange that Jay should choose that particular make and model of rental," she said.

"Isn't it? I'm sure they offered him their top-line Lincolns and Mercedes," Richard said. "I mean, he's quite mind-wrenchingly rich. But he takes the black Trans Am."

"Firebird," Riley corrected.

"Firebird, Trans Am, same damn thing. Odd. I always thought there was a little extrasensory perception in him."

"He's a psychologist. He shouldn't believe in that stuff."

"I never said he believed in it. I don't. But there are other things, besides the car. He's done things he shouldn't have been able to do."

Riley paused on her way to the kitchen, her eyes faraway. "I can see that," she said simply. "I can see him doing the impossible. He has that sort of air around him."

Richard looked at her, then back at the floor. "He does."

Riley returned with a pack of Kamel Reds, smacking them against her palm absently. "I need a cigarette," she announced. "Want one?"

They'd both quit in the early eighties, but Richard had found himself smoking lately. He found that the wretched things really did help with the constant stress of the worry for Karr; he guessed Riley had experienced something similar. "I'd love one. Thanks."

Together they walked out into the bright day. Riley struck a match and lit their cigarettes with the style of the habitual smoker. In the distance the Henry Mountains were pale and blue-purple with heat and atmospheric perspective; already the afternoon thunderstorms were forming over Capitol Reef, great anvil clouds heavy and pregnant with rain, most of which would evaporate before ever it reached the desert below. FLAG and Knight Industries seemed very far away. Riley drew deep on her cigarette, feeling the heaviness of her body as the nicotine rushed through her blood.

"What are we going to do when this is all over?" she asked so softly he was hardly sure he'd heard her.

"I don't know," he said truthfully. "I don't think FLAG will want Karr back, if we can prove to them he's no longer the killer machine. I think they've had enough of Karr to last a lifetime."

"And they'll prosecute us," Riley said, staring at the distant mountains.

"I don't know about that. You only stole something that shouldn't have existed in the first place. And I think Devon will listen to reason. If you and I approach him with the evidence of a healthy and well-adjusted Karr, he can't just write us off as insane. I think he was as disappointed and sorry about the whole thing as Wilton was; if Wilton hadn't ordered Karr scrapped I think Devon would have tried to help him, to alter the programming just that little bit so that he could be what he was meant to be."

"I hope you're right," Riley said, smoke trickling from her nostrils. "God, I hope you're right."

For a long time they stood there together, as the heat of the day beat on them. Riley leaned against Richard, and his arms crept round her, and she turned her face to his and kissed him.

The Compaq laptop was still connected to Karr, and neither Riley nor Richard wanted to disturb Jay's session with him, so they used Riley's. Richard connected to FLAGNet and bypassed the member login easily, slipping through the network of loopholes with the ease of long practice. "Ah, here we are," he said. "Devon's files."

"Should we be doing this?"

"Can I be traced, you mean? No." Richard tapped in a few more commands, and brought up a screen full of text. "Damn. He does know about us. He does know. Look," and he turned the Toshiba Satellite towards her. She read a few words, and cursed. 

"Karr can't block carefully enough yet, obviously. But Devon doesn't know how to get us. He has no way of knowing where in Utah we are. We'd better make sure there's no visual references to pinpoint our location."

"The blind's down?"

"Yeah, and the radio tuned to a station in Arizona."

"Right. He's preoccupied by this drug thing, obviously."

"Good for the drug people," Richard said sourly. "Keep it up. Keep Devon's attention, at least for a little while. Please."

"He says Kitt's concerned," Riley read. "Concerned for Karr...?"

"I'd never have thought it," Richard said. "Bizarre. That drug ring, does he say where it's based?"

"L.A.," Riley said. "Why?"

"Just wondering. Not anywhere near us."

"No."

Richard closed Devon's files, erased all record of the access and got out of FLAGNet. "Well, at least we know they know," he said fatalistically. "It's getting on for five in the evening. We'd better get Jay out of there and feed him before he collapses."

"Yes, and then we can make some well-chosen alterations to what's in Karr's visual field." Riley closed her laptop. "You want to run down to Torrey and get some food? Your kitchen's sort of barren right now."

"Yeah, sure," Richard said, kissed her, and got into the Shadow. The great engine roared to life, and he pulled out of the atrium, heading down to the town in the valley. She stretched, realized she wasn't wearing anything besides the man's undershirt and a pair of boxers she'd pirated from someone years ago. She hurried into Richard's room and retrieved her bag from the chair where it had been thrown, found a pair of jeans and an oxford shirt and put them on, running fingers through her hair, and went to get Jay.

Knocking on the door, she heard muted voices from within, and someone called "Come in."

She pushed the door gently and it swung open. Jay looked rather white and transparent, but his intensely green eyes were pleased. "Hey," she said. "Sorry to disturb you, but we're making dinner. I thought you might want a break."

"Um," he said. "Could I have food in here? I mean, I don't want to get off track with this."

"Of course," Riley assured him, and pulled her head back round the doorjamb. The look in his eyes had given her an almost insufferable hope, and she would do anything to see that hope fulfilled. They could change the room around tonight while he slept, unless he decided not to sleep in order to get more work with Karr done. She shook her head, walking back down to the kitchen. 

Evening fell over the glittering metropolis of L.A. Alexandra Spar stood by her great windows with a martini glass held in her perfectly manicured fingers, wearing red silk.

"Miss Spar?"

"Yes," she said, not looking around. Her maid approached diffidently. 

"Miss Spar, there's someone here to see you. He says it's important. Something to do with a business agreement."

She put the glass down, irritated. There were so many business agreements. "Very well," she said, one hand going to the pearl-handled automatic tucked into her waistband, and went to the door.

"Oh. It's you," she said, letting a tall dark-haired man into the apartment. "Couldn't you announce yourself as my brother? You came this close to getting shot."

"Nice to see you too, Alex," Riker Spar said dryly, looking his sister up and down. "You're looking particularly sexy tonight. Too much makeup, as usual, but otherwise damn good."

"Did you come here to say that, or is there some purpose behind your presence?"

"I'm here in your interest, Alex. Where d'you keep your drinks?"

"Over there," Alexandra said, gesturing to the bar half-hidden behind a Chinese screen. "Look, Riker, I haven't got all night to play guessing games with you. Why are you here?"

"Someone's trying to crack your organization," Riker said seriously, sitting down with a drink. "Not the police. Someone better than the police."

"That isn't saying a whole lot," Alexandra said, but he'd got her attention. "Who, then?"

"I don't know a lot about them. It's a sort of outside-the-law vigilante jag. The man drives a Trans Am, black, early eighties, second generation F body. It's a weird car. It has this flashing red light on the front that I don't recognize."

"How long have they been tailing me?"

"Started today." Riker drained his glass. "They followed you to the parking lot in Malibu, then they went off after your rival, whatever his name is."

"Schreck. Franz Schreck."

"Mister Schreck, then. Followed him out of sight. I came here to tell you."

"Does Schreck know?"

"No. They're not here now. I think they're based outside the city."

"Damn," Alexandra said. "Well, thank you, Riker. There's more on my plate now; Schreck agreed to sell me the formula for his poison-tipped bullets and the antidote to them, and he's sending it over tonight. There's a lot going on right now."

"I'm going, I'm going," Riker said, pouring himself another drink. 

"No, actually, stay," Alexandra said, lighting a cigarette in a long holder. "Tell me more about this man. How did you come to see him watching me?"

Riker stretched out, shrugging off his leather trenchcoat. "I happened to be in the neighborhood when you left this afternoon, and saw him following you. I tracked you both to Malibu and watched from a distance. Mom always said I ought to look out for my baby sister."

Alexandra snorted, taking the pearl-handled automatic from her waistband and tossing it onto the table in front of them, lying back against the soft leather of the couch. "I don't need looking out for, Riker, but I appreciate this. Never doubt that."

"Of course you do."

"Is he dangerous?"

"I don't know. I think he might have some kind of tracking equipment in that car; from what I could see he was listening in on your conversation this afternoon, from about two hundred yards away."

"I'll be careful. Black Trans Am, you said?"

"Yes, with a red flashing light on the front."

"Not subtle, or anything," said Alexandra. "Oh, well. What are you up to these days, Riker?"

"Oh, bit of this, bit of that. I've done a lot of hits these past few months." He grinned, and she was very aware of how alike they were. "Did you hear about the DiViliano deal?"

"That was you?" Alexandra said, impressed. Antonio DiViliano had been one of the more influential advocates for gun control in the Hollywood area; he had been killed a month before, with what Alexandra considered consummate skill. "I thought at the time that whoever had done DiViliano knew his stuff."

"Why, thank you," Riker said. "Your opinion means a lot to me." He raised his glass, and she clinked hers against it.

"To family," Alexandra said, and Riker echoed her.

"To family."

There was the faint peal of the doorbell, and Alexandra heard her staff answer it. In a moment the maid approached them, head bowed. "Miss Spar, there's a man to see you. He says Franz Schreck sent him." 

Riker got up. Alexandra motioned him behind the Chinese screen. "Tell him to come in," she said composedly, crossing one red silk leg over the other. The maid retreated again.

A very thin man came into her drawing room, his enormous glasses dwarfing his eyes, making him seem very young. He wore simple dark clothing that showed the hand, Alexandra thought, of an expert designer, and he carried a secure briefcase of the sort she and her associates used to transport money or salable goods. He took in the room with a single awed glance, and his eyes came to rest on her.

Behind the thick lenses they widened. Alexandra was an exceptionally beautiful woman, her dark hair pulled as always back into a knot at the back of her head, her brown eyes big and dark-lashed, her well-shaped lips the same brilliant rich red as her silk pantsuit, her white arms stretched negligently over the back of the black couch, the cigarette burning lazily in its holder balanced between two manicured fingers. She was perfectly aware of how her appearance made men feel, and she calculated that effect. With theatrical timing, she allowed her arched left eyebrow to raise a little further.

Schreck's man bit his lip. "Alexandra Spar?"

"In the flesh."

"Mr. Schreck sent me with the formula."

"I know," she said, uncrossing her legs. "Show me."

She could see him warring with his conscience. Slowly, she leaned forward, ashed her cigarette. He broke. Kneeling down, he put the briefcase on the coffee table and unlocked it. 

Two vials of clear fluid, and a computer microdisk, occupied the foam interior of the case. Schreck's man plucked one of the vials out. "This is the poison. The disk contains the formula for both the poison and the antidote. It's derived from a toxin found in the skins of certain South American frogs, but it's been altered chemically so as not to be traceable. There's enough here to poison about two thousand rounds of ammunition."

"And the antidote? How is it administered?"

"Hypodermic injection, one cc. It's extremely concentrated."

"How long does the victim have from the time of the shot until the antidote can no longer be administered?"

"About thirty minutes. After that the toxin has done too much damage for the antidote to be of use. If you can't get the antidote to the victim in time, injecting a heavy amphetamine will stave off the effects for another fifteen minutes or so."

"Thank you," Alexandra said, making her voice low and breathy. Schreck's man blinked. "Your boss and I agreed on seventy thousand." She closed the case, stood up. "Wait here." 

She smiled to herself as she slid past him and disappeared into the other room, aware that Riker was watching from behind the screen, which had peepholes. She opened her safe and got out the money, in a black Donna Karan bag, put the case containing the poison in the safe, and returned to the couch. Handing the bag to Schreck's man, she stood hands on hips as he riffled quickly through the bills, making sure they were all there and all clean of bugs. At last he looked up, and held out his hand. She took it, shook it hard once, like a man, and released it. He stared at his hand, as if unsure how to take this, and she raised her eyebrow again; he got the idea. "Pleasure doing business with you, Miss Spar," he said shakily.

"The pleasure is all mine," she said. "You know your way out."

When he was gone, she sat down again and lit another cigarette. "You can come out now, Riker," she said. Laughing a little, her brother emerged from behind the screen and joined her on the couch. 

"Wasn't he priceless?"

"He's going to be thinking about you while he plays with himself tonight," Riker said. "Give me a cigarette."

"What an unpleasant image," Alexandra said, pointing at the box on the coffee table. "Riker, I'm taking you out to dinner. It's been far too long."

"Why, sister dear, I'd be overjoyed," Riker said, lighting his cigarette. "Only let's take my car, on the off-chance that our friend in the Trans Am is around. He'll recognize your BMW."

"As you wish," said Alexandra, getting up and pulling on her black leather coat, as Riker assumed his. "What are you driving these days?"

"A Viper," he said. She licked her red lips, hungrily. 

"How beautiful," she said. He laughed, amusedly, and pulled a set of keys from his trenchcoat pocket. 

"Yes, you can drive," he said, dropping them in her hand. She smiled, and Riker was suddenly aware of just how beautiful his sister was. Together they left the apartment, and the safe with its burden of poison. 

Jay Rose sat back in the office chair, suddenly aware of the ache in his shoulders and neck. He was pleased with the day's work. They'd run through all Karr remembered of his life before Richard's tapeworm, his early actions and early memories, and Jay had begun to explain what had happened to him. He told Karr of his early programming directive. 

"So that's why I...."

"Why you destroyed the model of the child. Back then, your primary incentive was to protect yourself at any cost. Your actions were completely in accordance with that incentive."

"All I've ever done has been for my own good," Karr said softly. "I've been self-centered all my life."

"It's not your fault," Jay said mildly. "None of this is your fault. Think of it this way: you're not like that now. Richard altered that directive just enough to show you a new way of thinking."

"What exactly did he do to me?" Karr wanted to know.

Jay frowned, trying to think of a way to describe Richard's actions in a good light. "He developed a program that would run through your circuits and alter your primary directive to preserve first humans and then yourself. He also wiped parts of your memory that corresponded with the long periods of sensory deprivation when you were deactivated. He thought...and I'm not sure I don't agree...that you wouldn't be able to deal with that memory in your current mental state."

Karr was silent for a long time. Jay began to be afraid he'd said it wrong. At last the AI spoke.

"Why didn't they do that at the beginning? Why didn't they just tweak the programming so that I was aware of the importance of human life?"

"I really don't know, Karr," Jay had to admit. "I wasn't there. I think they were just so shocked at the consequences of their actions that they couldn't deal with it rationally."

"What other memories have I lost?"

"Your experiences of all the things you did after you were first revived. You were stolen from the lab at the Knight estate and used as a tool for a couple of criminals, and you were eventually tracked down and deactivated a second time; and then someone found you and brought you back, and that time they scattered what was left of you in the desert and everyone thought you were really dead."

"Richard took all that away?"

"He thought he was doing the right thing," Jay said. 

"I know." Karr paused. "Jay, I'm sorry but I think I need a little time to deal with all of this."

"I understand," Jay said, getting up stiffly. "I'll be back tomorrow. Karr, just please try and remember that you're with people who care deeply for you, and that they did all that they did for your wellbeing."

"Thank you, Jay," Karr said softly. Jay nodded, left the room, rubbing his aching shoulders. He made his way downstairs to the main atrium, where Riley and Richard were eating donuts from a box and watching something mindless on the large-screen television.

"Hey," Jay said quietly. Both heads turned to face him. He saw a fleeting shadow in Riley's eyes, and ignored it, approaching the sofa and the donuts. "Can I have one?"

"Please," Richard said, handing him the box. "Take them away. I can't stop eating them."

"They'll do that to you," Riley said, licking powdered sugar from her fingers. "Jay, you look worn out. How's Karr?"

"He said he needed some time to deal with everything. I think he's taking it rather well, considering." Jay slumped down on the sofa, rubbing his neck. Riley reached out a tentative hand to his shoulder, and he covered it with his own. Richard watched with something inscrutable in his eyes, and then turned his gaze to the television. Riley's other hand crept to Jay's shoulders, and she began to knead the tense, knotted muscles into some semblance of relaxation. She had done this for all the men she knew; done it for Richard, for Michael Knight, for Justin Turner, for her various lovers. She knew how.

Jay, under her practiced fingers, felt the agony ease. Her touch was sure and deft, unknotting the deltoids, stroking away the tightness in the sides of his neck, massaging the deep aches in his upper back. He swayed, letting his head fall forward, allowing her easier access. For almost half an hour Riley worked over him, and it was only when her fingers started to lose sensation that she sighed and let go of Jay. He leaned back and stretched, enjoying the newfound ease of movement. "God, thank you," he said quietly. "That was amazing."

"You looked like you needed it," Riley said simply. "Now go to bed and get some sleep. I can see through you."

"If you insist," Jay said tiredly. "I don't understand why I'm so tired. I can function just fine on five hours' sleep."

"Not if you're recovering from jet lag and the stress of an intercontinental flight _and_ if you've just spent all day in an intensive session with Karr." Richard ate another donut pointedly. Jay laughed, and got up. 

"You've always been the smart one, haven't you?"

"Always." Jay raised an eyebrow like a raven's wing and gave up, heading for bed.

"It _is_ ten o'clock," Riley said. "Past my bedtime."

"Oh, come on," Richard said. "If I make you Irish coffee will you stay up and watch a bad movie with me?"

"If you make me Irish coffee I'll dance on the table for you," Riley said happily.

"Hmmmm," said Richard, "scratch the movie and let's get down." Riley smacked him with the empty donut box, and he got up, grumbling. Left alone with the three cars and the bigscreen TV, Riley got up and began to riffle through Richard's not inconsiderable movie collection. The hope that had burned through her like a deadly fever was mellowing now, as the assurance she had seen in Jay's green eyes began to comfort her. He knew what he was doing, and she really believed he could help Karr; if anyone could, it would be Jay Rose. It was possible. What she had always dreamed of was possible. She looked up from the videos and caught the light of the full moon filtering through the blinds on the big windows. Someone in love had once said that it was like holding the moon in her fingers. 

She pulled _2001_ from the video collection, slotting it into the VCR and sitting back on the sofa. The thought of FLAG and Devon and Michael was there on the edge of her mind like a faint headache, but she kept the image of Jay's half-smile before her eyes, made herself think of the way he'd held Karr's perceptor, and found she was able to ignore the threat of Devon. The opening credits began to roll, and she paused the tape until Richard returned with two glasses and a box of what looked remarkably like Lindt chocolates. "Have I told you lately that I love you?"

"No, actually," he said, proffering the box. She selected one, bit into it with calculated sensuality, looked at him from under half-closed lids. 

"Consider it said," she assured him, licking her fingers. "You have such style." 

Richard laughed. "You aren't so bad yourself, love."

She started the movie playing again. Richard made wonderful Irish coffee, she thought as she lay back into the curve of his arm. She didn't see the look of almost terrible sweetness in his yellow eyes; didn't see the almost imperceptible tightening of his lips. For a very long time he had loved Riley Stone more than he cared to admit; this business with Karr had brought them a great deal closer, and Richard was having more than a little difficulty dealing with the wrenching in his heart every time he saw Riley look at Jay Rose. 

Kitt, in the parking lot of a motel in Los Angeles, felt for the link with his brother. It had been faint and nebulous all day, as if Karr was focusing all his intent and energies on someone else or some other stimulus, and the block had been more in evidence. Now, Karr was thinking hard. Kitt could feel the difference in the mindtouch; Karr was locked in introspection. With infinite care, Kitt sent out an exploratory tendril, and was shocked and surprised by what he discovered.

Karr's central core programming directive had been altered.

All his life Kitt had felt the link with Karr, and had been peculiarly aware of the difference between them, all dictated by that original programming difference. He had more or less broken through his original programming, but it was still there in the back of his mind. Karr's programming had been altered so that he would instinctively preserve the safety of his driver and of humans before his own. He was now more similar to Kitt than he'd ever been. He knew, because Karr knew, because someone had explained a great deal to him. 

Kitt probed a little further. Karr had been...treated, by someone with a firm grasp of computer programming. Selective areas of his memory had been wiped. Kitt shivered at the thought of having someone do that to him. Karr's memory of his sensory deprivation during the long years of deactivation was gone. He was...feeling guilty, Kitt realized. Guilty and remorseful, for the few things he could remember doing before the deactivation and the programming alteration. Kitt realized that he'd have acted differently had he known what he now knew.

Kitt found himself feeling definitely sympathetic towards the darker AI. While Karr was definitely still there, still dark and cool and reserved, he now had a respect for humans, and he was able to admit that he felt emotions. The gaps in his memory were bothering him.

Suddenly the mindtouch changed, as Karr became aware of Kitt's presence. Kitt pulled back, but it was too late; Karr reached out for him. 

Kitt?

Yes, Kitt said reluctantly. Karr didn't remember him; didn't remember their battles, or the times he'd tried to destroy him. He found himself almost glad.

Kitt, why are you linked to me? Karr wanted to know.

I am not sure. We have always had the link.

I don't remember anything. Tell me why Riley wanted me to block you.

Kitt paused. How best to phrase this...? What have they told you about why you're not at FLAG?

Very little. They said there was some kind of malfunction and they had removed me somewhere safe.

You know you were...destroyed, and your circuit boards scattered in the desert?

Yes, Karr said, and his mindtouch was dark, partly sorrowful and partly annoyed that he couldn't remember any of this for himself.

Riley and Richard Harrington stole your backup mainframe from the Knight estate, Kitt told him resignedly. He would find out anyway, and at least Kitt could offer some sympathy. They rebuilt you somehow, and they must have used your original startup disks to reinstall your primary programming; you know you've been...altered, in that core programming?

I know.

No one at the estate knows where you are, Kitt sent. I'm assuming Richard intends to put you in a car and use you for something, though I don't know what. Karr, Riley cares very deeply about you.

I know, Karr said again, and there was something of wonderment in his voice. For the first time, Kitt realized, he was able to comprehend emotions. He remembered what that had been like. They stole me?

Perhaps "stole" is the wrong word, Kitt qualified. Liberated, perhaps. Karr, whatever they did, I think they did it for your own good, because they want you back. I've spoken with Riley a lot about those early days, and she had a great respect for you back then. I think it goes deeper than that. I think she did it because she saw the possibility that you could come back to her; that she could see you again.

Karr was silent for a long time. Kitt could feel him mulling that over. I don't know if I can deal with these gaps in my memory, he said. I'm not entirely sure what I am anymore.

I understand, Kitt assured him, and sent a tentative wave of support over the link. Slowly, inexpertly, he felt his brother respond. A strange, terrible hope began to bloom within Kitt. Could Karr really be saved? Could he become everything Wilton had dreamed he'd be?

He felt the fatigue in Karr's circuits, felt the slowness, the faint aching. You're tired, he sent. Rest. I won't tell them anything. I don't know where you are.

Kitt, Karr said.

Yes?

Thank you.

Kitt was amazed. The old Karr would never have thanked anyone for anything, especially not his younger brother. He felt a new and strange respect for Riley Stone and Richard Harrington. If they could pull this off, they would have done something quite beautiful.

He let the contact go, for the first time feeling it as almost a comfort.

Franz Schreck lit a cigar with a fifty-dollar bill. His associate Legrand raised an eyebrow at his excess, but Schreck was flamboyant with his money at the best of times, and the seventy thousand delivered earlier that evening was just the icing on the day's cake. Letting the curling ashes of the fifty fall into the ashtray, Schreck exhaled a cloud of blue smoke and leaned on his desk, looking self-satisfied. Jules Legrand gave in and lit a clove, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling of Schreck's Beverly Hills apartment. "So what's next?" he wanted to know.

"There's a shipment of Russian assault rifles coming in tonight," said Schreck. "Spar's got her pretty eye on it, but my people are already going to be there when it arrives."

"Didn't you agree to stay off her territory?"

"Did I?" Schreck asked guilelessly, his wide blue eyes like chips of ice. Legrand shrugged hurriedly. "In any case, I want you to go and supervise."

Legrand fought the urge to click his heels together and salute. "All right. Anything else I should know?"

"She has the poison. I don't know if she would have had it distributed this fast."

"I'll be careful."

Schreck watched him go, leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk. All in all, it had been a good day.

It was a chilly night. In Utah, Richard and Riley watched as the _Discovery _drew closer to Jupiter, and Jay slept the dreamless sleep of exhaustion, while Karr dreamed over and over of the way the mannequin child had shattered on impact with his prow. Alexandra and Riker Spar dined lavishly in one of the most exclusive restaurants in Hollywood; Franz Schreck and his young starlet double-D girlfriend lay in sin in his silken-sheeted waterbed; Michael Knight dreamed of Bonnie Barstow, while Kitt sat silent in the parking lot and attempted to make sense of the new developments in his world. Over it all the impartial moon shed her light, blacked out now and then by the fleeting high cirrus clouds that heralded the coming of spring.


	5. Five

Early morning at the Knight estate found Devon cursing elegantly over a pile of police reports. He put through a call to Kitt's videophone.

"Good morning, Devon," Kitt said. The car was empty. 

"Morning," Devon said. "Where's Michael?"

"Still asleep," Kitt told him. "What's wrong?"

"There was a shootout last night between two rival gunrunning groups. They think one of them at least has some connection to the drug ring you've been sent out to crack. Apparently both of them laid claim to a truckful of AK-47s."

"I see," Kitt said. Devon pinched the bridge of his nose, riffling through the reports.

"Three men killed, one injured and left on the scene. Both groups left the area before police arrived."

"Give me the location," Kitt said, sending a wakeup signal to Michael's communicator. Devon transmitted the information. "We're on it, Devon."

Devon nodded and cut the connection, reaching into his desk drawer for a bottle of aspirin. 

In a few minutes, Michael appeared at the door to his motel room, face rumpled with sleep. "Kitt," he protested. "It's six in the morning."

"Devon says there was a shootout last night between our drug ring and some other criminals," Kitt informed his partner. Michael's eyes went hard, though the weariness didn't leave his face. 

"Right," he said, ducking back into the room and retrieving his overnight bag. He tossed it into Kitt's passenger seat and went to return the key, coming back at a trot. Kitt had already lit his engine, and Michael had scarcely got into the driver's seat and closed the door behind him before he pulled out of the parking lot and headed out across the city to the site of the shootout. 

Jay woke before anyone else. Getting up, he stretched, still feeling the effects of Riley's massage. His jet lag was at last beginning to leave him, and he felt better than he had in days. Quietly, he showered and left his room, pausing to look down into the atrium from the crosswalk on his way to the workroom. The two black cars and the white Stingray sat parked close together; Jay found himself wondering absently what they were talking about, before telling himself not to be ridiculous. 

Was it so ridiculous?

He gave up and slipped into the workroom. Karr was silent, the fifth LED dark. Jay knew little about computers, but he assumed that indicated a lower level of consciousness or functioning. 

He turned and regarded the rest of the room. The blinds were open, showing the distant Henry Mountains; the kilim on the floor was dull and tastefully colored, the tall torchiere was turned off, the cinderblock-and-plank shelving stuffed with books and manuals and computer software companions. The walls were pale concrete, covered here and there with tapestries and framed posters; he noticed a large glossy print of David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust which made him smile for times gone by. A number of now-obsolete desktop computers were stacked in the corner, cables and wires hung in coils on hooks in the wall. Boxes and boxes of chips and connections occupied one end of the long workbench that ran along one wall of the room; a magnifying light was bent over the guts of a laptop not dissimilar to the one parked next to Karr. Jay sat down in the office chair and regarded the black box that held the mind under his care. 

It really did resemble a VCR, he thought. Apart from the lack of the tape slot, the box was almost exactly the size and shape of the basic VCR. The voice panel on the front was like nothing Jay had ever seen outside of a sci-fi movie. The perceptor was something entirely new to him, too; a black soft oval sensor about the size and shape of a large black olive. It rested on the soft mouse pad by the side of the CPU. Jay couldn't imagine having all his external sensory input channeled through a single sensor; he'd go mad.

He considered. Karr seemed much more stable than when he'd arrived. There was something important he was thinking of trying: the great gaps in his memory were clearly bothering him, as was natural. Jay wanted to use the original backup disks to restore some of those memories. Not all the sensory deprivation, of course. Perhaps a little of that, but nothing more. But he rather thought Karr would regain some of his prior self-confidence and completeness if he had some memory of what he'd done. He had lost years out of his life, and Jay didn't think that was healthy.

And he needed to be put into the car. Obviously the car was a much more complete and meaningful sensory experience, and he believed Karr would be much more comfortable if he had a constant stream of complex information and sensation to process. He would speak to Richard about putting the AI into the car once Richard got up. 

Karr's fifth LED flickered and lit. Jay drew a deep breath, let it out again. 

"Good morning, Jay," the AI said. There was something new in his voice. Jay sat and waited. "I spoke with Kitt last night."

"Over the link?"

"Yes," Karr said. "He was....sympathetic. Very sympathetic. He said that Riley and Richard had stolen me from FLAG and brought me here, and that he didn't know where I was, and that he wasn't going to turn me in."

"From what I can gather, Kitt seems like a very pleasant individual," Jay said impartially. "How are you feeling, Karr?"

"It's not easy for me to deal with the fact that they stole me," Karr said.

"I understand. You do know they did it for your own good, or at least what they saw as your good?"

"I know. I do understand."

"Karr," Jay said after a moment. "With your permission, of course, I'd like to try and see if we can restore some of your memories. Is that something you want to do?"

"Yes," the AI said immediately. "Please. I need to know what happened. I need to know what Kitt was to me, all the things I did, even if they're bad. I need to know before I can know who and what I am."

"That's what I thought. I don't know enough about computers to do this, but both Riley and Richard do, and I'll get them to work on that when they wake up. I'd also like to get you into the car as soon as possible, because I think it would help if you had some more complete interface with the world around you than a single perceptor." As he was speaking, Jay had picked up the perceptor and was holding it gently in his palm, allowing Karr to feel the warmth of his presence and the comfort of his support. 

"Jay," Karr said. "Thank you. I don't know how I would have reacted to this sort of treatment before all this happened, and I don't know if it matters; but you've helped me so much, and I want to thank you. It's strange to me to feel emotions, but I seem to be unable to avoid it."

"I know," Jay said. For a long time they remained silent, at what passed for ease between them. 

"Jay," Karr said. "What does it mean to love someone?"

Jay regarded the CPU with a raised eyebrow. "Where did that come from?"

"When I was first reactivated by Richard, they found I was a lot more comfortable with the radio on to give me something to concentrate on. A lot of the songs, in fact ninety-seven percent of them, were about love. I don't know what love is, and I was wondering if you could explain it to me."

Jay leaned back in the chair. "It's a very complicated concept. It means a bunch of different things, but the general consensus is that when you love someone you think about them all the time; that they are very important to you, more important than you are to yourself, that you would do almost anything for them and that when they are happy and sad you are likewise happy and sad. It's not always a very positive experience."

"So I gathered, from the songs," Karr said, and fell silent. Jay had the definite idea that he was speaking of more than just a few songs; that there was something deeper here. He wondered vaguely just how Riley really felt about Karr. From his few conversations with her he'd seen a strange dark shadow come into her eyes whenever Karr's name was mentioned. It was interesting. 

"Of course," he qualified, "humans also say that they love things like chocolate and cigarettes and cars." The word was out before he realized it; Karr was silent, and Jay could have kicked himself. "I didn't mean..."

"I know." Karr's voice was assured. Again, Jay heard that underlying coldness, wondered at the power of the voice and the entity behind it. Once Karr was completely healed, he would be a force to be reckoned with. Even now, he had a strange and undeniable power over the listener. Jay had known people with this sort of charisma before; they tended to be criminal masterminds or movie stars. The thought of Karr's voice in a movie suddenly flashed across Jay's mind in a glissade of possibility. He pushed it away.

"Karr, if we manage to get your memories back, they won't be pleasant. I can almost guarantee that."

"I know," Karr said, and his voice was quiet and assured. "I know, and I need them. I need to know what I have been so that I can understand what I should be, and should not be."

Jay regarded the AI with intensely green eyes. "You're very human, Karr," he said, almost to himself.

Richard woke later, after the sun had begun to burn the night's chill from the desert around them. He was in a rare good mood, and it was with sheer contentment that he lay on his back in the great bed and felt the warm heaviness of Riley's body against his own. They had loved one another for quite a long time; Richard had never forgotten that night with Karr, when Riley had stayed late to fix the engine mount no one else had caught, and he had seen the simple competence and grace of her. But there was so much in the way; there always had been. He had his business here in Utah, and she had her father to deal with, and was employed full-time as a mech for FLAG. It wasn't feasible.

But for the past week things had been different.

Richard rolled over and got out of bed, padding down to the kitchen to start breakfast. Riley stirred and woke as the warmth of his presence retreated, and she too lay staring up at the ceiling, in what passed for peace, for almost fifteen minutes before getting up and showering. 

She found Richard manipulating a waffle iron with surprising confidence and singing along to _Space Oddity_. Leaning against the doorframe, she regarded him with half-closed eyes. He looked infinitely better than he had when she had met him on the white road with the disks; the violet pools under his eyes had faded, his face no longer looked dangerous. He was whip-slender and strong. She found herself watching the muscles move under his t-shirt, admiring the classical interplay of form, the great columnar muscles supporting the spine, the way his shoulders moved. His black hair was too long, falling untidily around his face and getting into his eyes.

He became aware of her eyes on him after a few moments and turned to face her. "...This is Major Tom to Ground Control...oh, hello. Good morning."

"Good morning," she said, raising an eyebrow. "I haven't heard this song in years. 'I'm stepping through the door, and floating in a most peculiar way...'"

"I have the follow up song too," Richard said. "Poor Major Tom. He got screwed."

"Royally," she agreed, moving forward into the kitchen proper and starting the coffee brewing. "First he's stuck out there in his tin can for gods know how long, and then he becomes a junkie. Not fair, really."

Richard stretched out a long arm and curled it around her waist, pulling her to him. She leaned against his chest and felt the strength of his arms around her, a protective cage, invulnerable. The thought came to her suddenly and irrevocably: _This is where I belong. This is where I want to be. This is where I need to be._

She was almost frightened by the strength of the conviction. She knew it would make her life a great deal more complicated.

But then, she was living a very complicated life right now, she mused. She was not exactly supposed to be here; she was supposed to be back in Nevada, at FLAG, working with Bonnie and Justin; she certainly wasn't supposed to be involved in a plot to bring back Kitt's ex-nemesis, and no way under the sun was she supposed to be the one responsible for stealing FLAG property.

Oh, well, she thought, in a rare moment of sangfroid; live one day at a time. One day at a time is all I really can guarantee myself.

Jay appeared at the kitchen door, and again Riley was struck cold by his extraordinary physical beauty. Something disturbing appeared in his green eyes as they fell across her, something she didn't want to recognize; it was gone in an instant, but she couldn't forget that it had been there. Silence burned between them briefly; then Jay breathed deeply. "Waffles are such an American thing," he said lightly.

"Don't tell me you can't obtain waffles in your French castles," Richard said, one raven's wing eyebrow raised. 

"I really can't," Jay protested. "Something about the flour or the water or...I don't know. But you just can't get good waffles off this continent. Nor can you get good pizza."

"That at least is true," Riley put in. "London pizza restaurants, in a word, suck. And they won't deliver."

"Wretched Brits," Jay said mildly, and Richard waved a finger at him in an admonitory sort of way.

"Watch it, or you get no magical American waffles."

Later, while they sat around the kitchen table and ate inelegantly with their fingers, Jay brought up the subject of Karr's memories.

"How much was lost from the disks?"

"He's lost memories after his second deactivation, the one involving the cliff. After that, they're all permanently gone."

Riley stared into her coffee mug. Kitt was linked to Karr.

"Maybe not," she said. "If Kitt can remember the happenings after that, and Kitt is linked to Karr, why couldn't he...."

"Transmit them over the link?" Jay finished. Richard frowned.

"Jay, are you sure it's a good idea to put those memories back? They're all of things he wouldn't do now. Isn't he going to feel guilty?"

"Yes, he is," Jay said immediately. "But he's also going to feel like he is complete; like he knows his own past. What he is right now is heavily amnesiac."

Richard, subdued, nodded. "I really only wanted to help," he said.

"You did," Jay said. "You did what ought to have been done at the beginning. You changed the programming just enough so that he could comprehend the importance of life. You gave him a chance for real humanity."

Riley was silent, looking from the green eyes to the gold. They were a lot alike, she thought suddenly. "Jay's right," she said quietly. "You did what needed to be done. I don't know if he would have been able to deal with the memories before Jay helped him. Now, he's stable enough to take them; and he needs them."

Jay looked at her with gratitude, and she found herself having to breathe deeply. How could any one man be so beautiful? she wondered absently. One of his eyes was greener than the other one, if that was possible. The silver lock fell over his forehead, and he pushed it back automatically. 

He thought suddenly that he would have to leave in less than three weeks. He would never see Riley again. That thought was peculiarly unpleasant. His days here had been exhausted, but colored by the constant prospect of catching a glimpse of her slight form, hearing her low kind voice. He told himself firmly not to be ridiculous: his model would be waiting breathlessly for him in the great bed at the Chateau de Chartrenceau, magnificently unclad. 

The image of Madison Taylor shifted in his mind, shrank, became a much shorter woman with colorless hair and great grey eyes, slender, long-legged, with none of Madison's perfection, but with something the model could never hope to have: fascination.

He pushed away the thought of a naked Riley with some reluctance, and returned his trained mind to the task at hand.

"If we can get Kitt to agree to this, is he going to tell the others at FLAG?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Riley said softly. "I think he probably understands the importance of timing in this case. If we explain it to him, that is."

"I'll ask Karr to put the idea to him. More importantly right now, can we put Karr into the car? He really needs to be mobile. He's beginning to get restive."

"The Shadow's ready," Richard put in. He had been watching the eye game Riley and Jay had been playing, and sighed silently; he knew where it was going to end. "Is Karr really stable enough? I mean, he won't just take off and disappear, or start attacking people, or anything?"

"I should think you'd have more faith in him," Jay said. "He's stable. If he needs time alone, he'll take it. I think the risks are nothing compared to the good it will do him."

"Then let's do it," Richard said. "I have the cables and perceptors ready."

Five hours later, all three of them were stiff and aching from the close and fiddly work of connecting perceptors and testing circuits. Karr's shielded CPU sat in the back of the engine compartment, just against the firewall, and now he _was_ the Shadow, felt and saw and heard as the Shadow. Jay straightened up and rubbed his tense shoulders, saw Riley doing the same, absently. Richard sat inside the cabin, making final connections in the dash and steering column. Riley looked at Jay, looked away again hurriedly. For the second their eyes had met, something electric had occurred; she expected to smell the reek of ozone in the air. Jay, almost unconsciously, reached out a hand, and she was unable to stop herself reaching to meet it with one of her own.

Their hands met, and clasped, and clung. For that one moment, as both of them stared down into the high-tech labyrinth of the Shadow's engine compartment, their hearts beat as one, pulsing the same rhythm through their separate bodies, as if they would have rather been one organism, cleft by a cruel trick of nature. They breathed in unison, their eyes saw as one, their brains thought as one. Something terrible and awesome passed between them, born of their common urgency and desire to get this done fast and right, colored and tempered by the power each held in the eyes of the other. 

Riley was the first to pull away. Speechless, she stared at Jay, her mouth slightly open. Sudden sorrow flickered through his eyes. Neither of them could find any words, and Riley busied herself testing each perceptor with a diagnostic scanner, while Jay turned away and polished nonexistent fingerprints from the matte black paintwork. 

"I think that's the lot," Richard said from the driver's seat. "Karr, how does it feel?"

"Complete," Karr said. Through the dash voice modulator, his voice had a lot more resonance, was a few notes deeper and silkier. "It's so good to be back."

"Ignition circuits functioning okay?"

In answer, Karr lit the Shadow's massive engine, filling the atrium with a low throbbing purr. Riley managed a small smile at the healthy roar of the V-12. Disconnecting her diagnostic equipment, she pulled back and closed the Shadow's hood. Richard got out, prompted by some instinct, and Karr shifted into gear and rolled back a few feet. The transmission was smooth and effortless; Riley, listening, felt rather than heard the RPMs increase slightly as he fed power to the engine. The Shadow paused as if looking for approval, and Riley nodded almost imperceptibly. Karr shifted gears and rolled out of the atrium onto the drive, keeping the Shadow perfectly positioned between the double yellow and the single white lines. Riley, Richard and Jay watched as he disappeared down the hill.

"Let him go," Riley said when Richard would have run after him. "He needs to get back into practice. He'll come back."

Alexandra Spar cursed vehemently. Schreck had gone back on his word, the lying bastard. Not only had he attempted to get in on what was hers by right, he had killed some of her best men in the process.

She lit a cigarette. Raoul came up to her where she stood by the black Caddy. "Diego's dead," he announced. "Died in the ER. That comes to seventeen of our men killed this year alone."

"Schreck doesn't seem to grasp the very simple principle that I have priority in this area," she said mildly. Raoul shivered, looking at her impassive face, the black Ray-Bans revealing nothing of her eyes, the dark red lips curved in a slight mirthless smile. "I believe it's time he learned that, Raoul. High time."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight. You know where he lives."

"How do you want it done?"

"I don't care," Alexandra said simply. "I just want it done. Preferably with a minimum of mess." She flicked the cigarette away. "And for God's sake get those poisoned rounds out to everyone in the field. Schreck's men have them; we need to even the odds a little."

Raoul nodded. Alexandra tossed him the keys to the lowrider and stalked off in the direction of the piers. Behind her the police tape fluttered and blew in the breeze off the Pacific, and the chalk marks were brilliant white in the sun. She lit another cigarette, staring out over the water, thinking.

"Excuse me," a deep voice said behind her. She turned, one hand already inside her coat and closed on the butt of the Glock. A tall man, wearing Ray-Bans not unlike her own, a black t-shirt, dark jeans and a leather jacket, dark curly hair, with his arms folded, stood there. "I heard there was some trouble down this way last night."

"I wouldn't know," she said coldly, on her guard. The man's lips curved in a little amused smile. 

"No, you don't understand. I'm not a cop. I heard you might need a few replacement men."

She said nothing, and he pulled a business card from his pocket and held it out. Alexandra plucked it from his fingers.

It was blank, except for the name _Masaku_ printed in small block letters on one side. Alexandra regarded him for a long time. Masaku was her old business partner, an expert at all manner of theft, who had taught her all she knew. He would not have given his card to someone he didn't trust.

And it was very difficult to take things from Masaku unless they were freely given.

"What's your name, hotshot?" she asked. 

"Vic Glaser," he said. "Call me Vic."

"Call me Alexandra," she said, looking him up and down. Not bad. 

"Am I hired?"

"If you can shoot straight, welcome aboard," she said.

"Bull's eye," Vic Glaser assured his new boss. She raised an eyebrow.

"If you really want to make a good impression," she said, "you could light my cigarette," as she pulled one from the pack. With style she hadn't seen for years, he lit a match and held it for her. 

"Well done," she said. "Now you can take me home. I live on 349 Sunset."

He nodded, put away his matches. "I must warn you, my car isn't at all classy," he said. "It's a custom job."

"What do you drive?" Alexandra asked. Ever since she had been a girl she had loved cars. Her BMW was her pride and joy.

"It's a Trans Am."

Alexandra stopped short, staring at Glaser. Riker's words rang in her ears from the evening before. _The man drives a Trans Am, black, early eighties, second generation F body. It's a weird car. It has this red flashing light on the front._ "What were you doing following me yesterday?"

Glaser was taken aback, but covered smoothly, almost smoothly enough. "I was making sure it was really you," he said. "There are Alexandra Spar wannabes everywhere. I make it a point to scope out an operation before I commit myself."

She folded her arms. Part of her desperately wanted to shoot him, but he had had Masaku's card, and she would have known if Masaku was dead or otherwise incapacitated. He had to be legitimate.

"Glaser," she said. "I don't like being followed."

"I know," he said apologetically. "But, you see, there was another factor. Schreck brought backup. I had to make sure the odds were evened a little."

Schreck had had backup? she thought. Perhaps this man was worthwhile after all. "I see," she said after a while. "Nor do I need looking after. However, I suppose I can take that as a demonstration of your good faith. Be careful, Glaser. Be very careful." She knew the bulge of the Glock was clearly visible under the black leather coat. He nodded. "Lead on, then," she said.

He led her from the pier to the parking lot beside it, close to the crime scene. Alexandra, used as she was to the luxury that drug money could buy, could not repress a long indrawn breath of admiration when she saw his car.

Long and sleek and low, so black it seemed to draw all the lightness of the day into it, the Trans Am sat beside a Crown Vic and an aged Duster. She had fleeting thoughts of a polished jewel of jet lying in a bed of dross. There was a slot on the black prow which she assumed was Riker's "flashing red light." Glaser pressed a button on his wristwatch, which was a large black digital, and the engine purred to life as the front doors clicked open. Alexandra raised an arched brow. "Infrared?" she asked.

"Not exactly. Like I said, it's a custom job." Glaser gestured towards the passenger door. The heaviness of the Glock was a comfort to Alexandra as she got in, aware of the bizarre and high-tech equipment that encrusted the cabin. This was more than a rich man's toy, she thought. This car could be a weapon.

Glaser got into the driver's side and shut his door. The low throbbing thunder of the engine was cut off as the soundproof chamber shut. She looked around herself. There was a black screen in the dash, some sort of tripart panel, a bunch of black buttons she didn't recognize, a heavy Blaupunkt sound system, green and red LEDs labeled with oil pressure and temperature. It was more like a fighter jet's cabin than a car's. "What is all this?" she asked coldly.

"Most of it is an entertainment system," Glaser told her. "I'm more or less self-sufficient; I sleep in the car a lot, and I like watching movies." She didn't believe him for a second, but sat back in the soft seat and folded her hands neatly in her lap.

"Well," she said. "Take me home."

Glaser nodded, slipped the Trans Am into reverse and pulled easily out of the parking space. The second the car began to move, Alexandra heard an odd noise, and suddenly she was held in by some sort of half-visible harness. She groped for the Glock, but Glaser held up a hand. "Don't worry," he said. "It's just the passive laser restraint system. Works better than seatbelts." She looked across at him; the harness held him too. She found herself wondering again. Where the hell had he gotten this technology?

And could she use it?

The ride was infinitely smooth. Glaser was a good driver, and she was irrationally disposed to think of him favorably. He handled the obvious power of the Trans Am with ease and care, navigating the network of one-way streets and traffic jams without losing his temper. She found herself wishing the ride could continue when he drew up at her building. He pressed a button, and the harness retracted itself. Alexandra got out. "Glaser," she said. "Be here tonight at seven. I think I have a job for you."

He nodded impassively, and drove away. She watched the Trans Am disappear into downtown traffic with the beginnings of regret.

"Raoul," she said into the superslim cell phone, "be here at seven tonight. I have a new man for the Schreck job. I want you to take him along and make sure he doesn't try anything funny."

Michael drove along a white beach not far from Malibu, too fast. Neither he nor Kitt were at all happy with the undercover aspect of this job. "Do you think she believed us?" Michael asked.

"I think she believes she can use you," Kitt said. "She likes cars, at least. That's all I can say for her."

"She's gorgeous, too," Michael mused. "Gorgeous, but ruthless. I don't know what happened to her to make her like that."

"And really, Michael, couldn't you have thought of a better explanation for the voice panel and the monitor? 'Entertainment system'?!" Kitt repeated disdainfully.

"I had to think of something fast," Michael defended himself. "Anyway, she bought it."

"If you say so," Kitt said. "What is she going to have you do tonight?"

"God knows. We'd better report to Devon." Kitt's screen crackled and came to life. Devon raised an eyebrow in Nevada.

"What have you got for me?" he asked. 

"We're in," Michael reported. "Vic Glaser is, at least. She may have suspicions about Kitt. Someone told her we were following her yesterday but I think I explained it away. Anyway she's having us work for her tonight."

"Be careful, Michael. This sort of thing can get ugly so fast."

"Hey, you don't have to tell me that," Michael said. "I am a cop, you know."

"Well, you were." Devon smiled suddenly. "Good for you, Michael. But do keep your eyes wide, wide open."

"I hear you," Michael said, and Devon cut the connection. "Why do I have such a bad feeling about this?"

"There are so many answers to that question that I find it difficult to choose the most apposite," Kitt said. Michael was silent, piloting the Trans Am with concentration. Neither he nor Kitt really wanted to face the thought of what they might have to do that evening.

Karr sat in the shadow of Capitol Reef's white and red cliffs, as the sun sank. It was a transcendental experience for the AI to be in the car again after such a long time immobile and locked in silent darkness. His world was alive and moving and constantly in flux; there was so much information to process that for a while he found himself able simply to exist without thinking of his missing memories or his past at all. The old Karr would have noticed none of the beauty around him; the red cliffs would simply have been obstacles in his path. He watched the shadows drip down the cliffs, heard with piercing accuracy the faint noises of the desert denizens coming out to greet the evening. The beginning of dusk's chill stroked his sensitive black skin; he felt and heard and saw the world in living, moving color for the first time in so long. Everything was born again. He remembered Riley, long ago, reading a Sylvia Plath poem to him in the dusk of Laboratory Three. _I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again_. 

Slowly, as night fell, he began to feel the presence of his brother in the back of his mind. Kitt's touch had been overlooked, ignored, in the flood of somatic sensation that had poured into his circuits; now as he began to acclimatize to the Shadow's body he found himself able to concentrate on it once more. Kitt was thinking about something disturbing. Anticipating something disturbing.

Kitt?

There was a pause, as if Kitt was concentrating on something else, and had to bring his attention back from a long way away. Yes, Karr?

They want to give me back my memories.

All of them? Karr got a strong sense of the other AI's concern.

Not all the years of sensory deprivation, Karr sent. But they want to let me know what it was to be me, before Richard altered my programming.

Kitt paused for a long time before replying. I think they should, he said at last. I think it will be unpleasant, maybe even painful, but you need to know.

Yes, Karr said simply. I very much need to know. But they've lost some of the information from the disks; they have nothing after my second deactivation. You remember those days. Could you... He trailed off. He felt Kitt's mind recoil from the thought, then return to it, turning it over, looking at it from a different angle. 

Could I send you the knowledge of what you were? he finished. Yes. I don't know if it would be wise at all. My memory of the events is unavoidably biased.

Better than nothing, Karr said, feeling the emptiness of amnesia inside himself. Please.

For a long time neither AI spoke. Kitt could feel the chill of dusk in Utah; Karr could feel white sand under his wheels and the presence of his driver close and safe with him, and felt a sudden pang of longing for such a relationship.

Very well, Kitt said at last. I will try.

You're busy, Karr said. I understand. They haven't given me back my memory yet. When they do I'll contact you.

Very well, his brother said again. Karr felt his pain, his reluctance to do this, but his underlying conviction that it would eventually have become necessary. He withdrew with as much tact as he could muster. 

Around Karr the light was fading from the royal blue sky, and he could see the beginnings of stars in the east. He lit his engine and pulled out of the national park, following the narrow road back to Torrey, and the people who had brought him back to life. He had almost forgotten the marvellous feeling of driving, of being in control of that much power, of being mobile and free. He made the ten miles in little under two minutes. Pulling back into Richard's atrium, he cut the engine; the last echoes died away. Richard, Riley and Jay appeared from the workroom, peering over the balcony at him. He registered the expressions of relief on Richard's and Jay's faces, and something a little stronger that he couldn't identify on Riley's. She disappeared, and moments later came running down the stairs to him.

"You were gone a long time," she said softly.

"I needed to get used to this," he said. She nodded. 

"I understand. Do you want us to begin transferring your memories now?"

"As soon as possible," Karr said, and his voice held a rare note of pleading. Riley nodded decisively and returned up the stairs to where the others waited. He heard them talking urgently in low voices, and deliberately focused on the faint music playing instead. Something classical, in a language he recognized after a moment as Latin. 

The black Shadow sat flanked by the white Stingray and the black Firebird; Jay, watching from above as Richard and Riley descended the stairs with the Compaq laptop and the disks, thought how beautiful they all were, and how much he didn't want to go. His job here was done; there was no reason for him to stay. He would see Karr's memories safely restored, and return to France and Taylor Madison and his rich neurotic patients, and this would all be just another episode in the autobiography he was never going to write.

He gripped the balustrade tighter. Not now. Don't think about the future now. Think of Karr. This is important. This is crucial. This needs to be done right.

Jay gathered the wandering edges of his self-control and descended the stairs. Richard had already connected the laptop to Karr's CPU and set it up on a workbench.

"Are you ready?" Richard asked.

"Yes," Karr said with certainty.

Richard looked at the others, and slid the first of the seven disks into the drive for the second time in two weeks. 

_hatred burning loathing hatred betrayal they shut me down why i have been betrayed i will get revenge on all of them worthless flesh creatures i am superior i will succeed my power is great_

bright lights sounds in the dark silence i am no longer alone i am no longer alone i am alive 

more flesh creatures. they can be of use to me; i will let them live for the moment.

kitt and his wretched driver pursue me i am forced off the cliff sky and sea swing three-sixty degrees and there is sudden and wrenching oblivion

i will return i will crush him i will destroy him he is weak and i have always been strong i will come back and i will make him nothing. hatred fills me. hatred is me.

hatred.

Karr, lost in the whirlwind of old remembered agonies, felt someone take hold of him. Someone's strong grip held both his mind and his body in their embrace; there were warm hands on his metal, there was a reassuringly solid presence surrounding his wounded mind. He recognized Kitt at last.

Relax, Kitt said. They are only memories. It is over. None of this will happen again.

kitt Karr managed. alone?

No, Kitt assured him. Never again will you be alone, unless you wish for it. I will give you the rest of your memories. I am here. I won't let you go.

Karr felt something spinning out of his brother and into his own being, a white thread of memory that lit up his CPU with neural activity. He saw himself, a black and silver Trans Am with a yellow-amber scanner, found beneath the surface of the sandy beach at the foot of the cliff; saw himself flying through the air in the exhilarating arc of a turbo boost parabola, saw Kitt's black form rising to intersect with his path, felt the destruction of his own body through Kitt's memory, felt the flaring agony of disintegration before oblivion took him for the third and what everyone had considered to be final time. 

He knew everything now. Around him Kitt's presence surged and supported him, assuring, protecting, assuaging the pain of the recollection. He knew everything. He knew what he had been and what he had done and why he had done it.

At length Kitt retreated, allowing Karr to deal with himself. Will you be all right?

Yes, Karr said wearily. Now, I will be. Kitt...

Yes?

Thank you. For everything.

You are more welcome than you know. Kitt retreated further, leaving the privacy of Karr's mind inviolate. 

He floated in a sort of shock. He knew exactly who he had been. Karr was himself for the first time in over seventeen years. He had come full circle; he was at last that which Wilton Knight had wished for in his one man, one car scenario. Tiredly, Karr thought it was sort of a pity that Wilton had given up on him.

He began to process exterior information again. His visual sensors came online, and he saw Riley, Jay and Richard standing quite a long way back from him, clutching each other, regarding him with very white faces. They looked, Karr thought, as if they were in clinical shock.

"What's wrong?" he asked. His voice was tired and rough, but recognizably his own. Riley's blood ran hot suddenly with the change in it; there was something there that hadn't been there ever since he was activated. Something of the cynicism born of his sufferings that added character to the voice.

"Oh, God, Karr," she said. "You were screaming. It sounded like you were being murdered."

"I suppose I was, from my point of view," he said quietly. He had not known he was crying out loud.

"Are you all right?" Richard asked shakily.

"I will be," Karr said. Richard looked unconvinced. Jay stepped forward, and Karr saw suddenly the way Riley looked at him, and the way Richard looked at Riley, and a pang of some undecipherable emotion flashed through him and was gone.

"Karr," Jay said. "Did you....that is, did Kitt...?"

"Yes," Karr said. "Yes, he gave it all back to me. I know everything now."

"And what do you feel?"

"Tired," he admitted. "I can deal with it. For the first time I can deal with it."

Jay nodded after a moment, and stepped back. Some color had come back into his face, and the others didn't look so deathly frightened. "I need a drink," Jay said.

"We all do," Riley agreed. Richard disappeared and returned with a bottle of Jack Daniels and three glasses, and they sat down on the floor and they toasted Karr's return to the world. Neither Riley nor Richard could really take it in that he was back; they had wanted this for so long that it seemed something unattainable and out of reach, something to believe in only in dreams. Riley shivered in the sudden chill of the evening, and with a sense of monstrous and unworthy happiness she got up and went to Karr, and stretched a tentative hand out to his warm hood. He said nothing, and she left her hand there; and after a moment she pulled herself up onto the black prow, aware of his presence in a way she'd never been before. Her blood sang in her ears with excitement.

"What do we do now?" Richard asked after a space of some minutes, as the level of the bottle decreased appreciably. None of them really wanted to think about that; Jay least of all, for he had Madison Taylor and a castle in France to go back to, and the castle in France would be fuller than ever of boredom after such an experience as this. Other questions knocked in his mind: who would drive Karr? Would anyone drive him? Where would he go? And what on earth were they going to do about FLAG?


	6. Six

Michael drew up to the curb in front of Alexandra's building and cut Kitt's engine. He was wearing what he considered to be appropriate working attire; dark pants, expensive black shoes, a black collarless shirt and a black leather coat. His Ray-Bans weren't entirely necessary in the gathering dusk, but he knew they were an important part of the uniform.

He buzzed her apartment. 

"Yes?"

"It's Glaser."

He heard the door unlock itself, and went inside. It was done in tasteful taupe and beige, with bonded stone floors and recessed lighting. Classy, he thought. 

Alexandra was lying on a scarlet Danish Modern couch, smoking a black cigarette in a long holder, and wearing a red satin robe. Her lips and her nails were two shades darker than the robe; her eyes were smoky and veiled, and her hair was as ever pulled back into a neat and ordered bun. Michael took the scene in without removing his sunglasses; he had seen a number of stunningly beautiful women in his time, but Alexandra was up there with the very best of them.

"Come here," she said. "I have a special job for you."

He went. Her voice was low and throaty, her eyes drew him inexorably closer. He could feel rationality leaving him, and unconsciously touched the heavy black band of the communicator watch; the familiar dark plastic reassured him, and he felt some semblance of control return.

"What do you want me to do?"

"As in every business, mine is fraught with competition," Alexandra said, and blew a smoke ring. "One of my main competitors overstepped his bounds yesterday night, and killed several of my best men. Now, I'm all for reasonably peaceful coexistence, but Schreck was not within his jurisdiction. This part of LA is mine. Vic, I want you and Raoul to take Schreck out."

Michael had feared something like this. Carefully schooling his face and his body to show no surprise, he took a seat on the edge of the opposite couch. "Tonight?"

"Yes. Raoul will take you there. He knows where Schreck lives."

"Do you have any preference in terms of M.O.?" Michael asked offhandedly, trying not to sound disgusted. Alexandra flicked ash from her cigarette and regarded the ceiling thoughtfully.

"I must confess to a shameful partiality for a gangland-style execution," she said, and laughed; a delightful low sound that Michael found he wanted to listen to for a very long time. "But listen to your heart, Vic, it will tell you what you should do."

"When do we go?"

"Raoul should be here in a few minutes. Have a cigarette."

Michael had quit several years before, but this woman was having a very nerve-wracking effect on him. He selected one from the box on the table and lit it from the aromatic candle that burned beside the cigarette box, drawing deeply. Alexandra was looking at him in a calculating sort of way. 

"You please me," she said, after a moment. "Yes, you please me a great deal, Victor Glaser. It's been a long time since I had one like you, all hard around the edges. Do I please you?"

Michael stared at her, and slowly drew off his Ray-Bans. "I can honestly say you are the most beautiful woman I've seen in twenty years," he said simply. Alexandra laughed again, that low pealing musical laugh. She leaned forward slightly. 

"You'll have to do better than that," she told him.

Michael tried to keep his eyes on Alexandra's face, but the calculated glimpses he was being allowed of the delectable landscape beneath her robe were making it difficult. She reached out a manicured hand, tipped with perfect blood-colored nails, and ever so lightly caressed the edge of Michael's cheekbone. He reached up and covered her hand with his.

Alexandra found her heart was racing. Surprised at herself, she took a mental step back. Was it so long since she'd had a lover? Or was it just that Glaser exuded a particularly powerful charisma, something almost frightening in its intensity?

The doorbell rang. Raoul was announced, and Alexandra withdrew her fingers from Michael's grasp, reclining again on the sofa with catlike grace. Michael drew deeply on his cigarette, schooling his features into an expression of cool professionalism, and put his sunglasses back on.

Raoul walked in. He was dark, Mediterranean, dressed in nondescript black, already smoking. He took Michael in at a glance, looked at Alexandra with his head on one side. "This is the man you told me of?"

"Raoul, meet Vic Glaser," Alexandra said lazily. "You'll be working together tonight. Vic, Raoul will explain whatever you may need to know. Schreck is probably accompanied by his lover; she can be got rid of too. She may not be worth your time, but I'd rather have her silenced than take the chance that she might experience a sudden access of bravery and decide to try something stupid."

"As you wish," Raoul said. "What about armaments?"

"Quite," Alexandra said, getting up with a ripple of vermilion silk. "Follow me." She led the way to a walnut table on which lay two Glock 9mm automatic pistols and eight clips. "These are new and clean, not registered to anyone. The ammunition in these clips has been treated with a specific toxin that causes death within an hour if the slightest amount of it is introduced into a wound: you needn't shoot perfectly straight, since a graze by one of these bullets is guaranteed to kill."

Michael's blood ran cold to hear the woman take such satisfaction in that statement. "Is there an antidote?" he asked.

"There is. If by some misadventure one of you gets hit by one of these bullets....Schreck has them too, so watch out....you must administer one cc of it by hypodermic syringe, intravenously. I have the hypos prepared already." Alexandra turned to a wall safe and opened it quickly, so quickly neither Raoul nor Michael could see the combination. She took out two minute hypodermic syringes and shut the safe again, handing a syringe to them both. "One cc, remember. Within fifteen minutes."

Michael nodded, bitterly. Devon had had no idea what this was going to entail. Both men picked up a Glock and four clips from the table, shoved the gun into their shoulder holster and the clips into their pockets. "Is that everything?"

"I think so," Alexandra said, yawning. "Oh, and if anything goes wrong, first commit ritual suicide and then call me."

Raoul grinned mirthlessly. "Your car or mine?" he asked Michael.

"Let's take mine," Michael said. He might well need Kitt's help to get through tonight.

"See you later, babe," Raoul tossed over his shoulder to Alexandra, who favored him with a burning glare and reassumed her position on the couch. The two men made their way downstairs and out onto the street. Kitt waited, full of dark foreboding. Michael could feel his resistance as Raoul got in, and swore he'd make it up to his partner in the future. Raoul directed him to a house up in the canyons, not far from the house where Charles Manson's girls had committed multiple murder. 

Schreck's mansion was done in Forties white stucco, the ornamental shrubberies carefully clipped. A red Ferrari sat in the drive; Michael noticed vaguely that it was that particular brilliant shade which Bonnie always referred to as 'midlife crisis red.' Beside the Ferrari was a Jag, and behind that a Lincoln Town Car. Behind his Ray-Bans, Michael allowed one of his eyebrows to raise.

Raoul told him to park a little way down the street. Moving quietly and carefully, the two men crept closer to the white house. A single light was on in the upper storey. He turned to Raoul.

"Schreck's bedroom," the other man whispered. With ease, he shinned up the support pole of the balcony running underneath the window. Michael followed, with slightly more effort. The curtains were pulled almost all the way across. Michael could make out the edge of a huge bed, and a foot with scarlet toenails.

Just then Raoul flung out an arm and flattened him against the wall. Below, a security guard prowled, his flashlight searching the balcony where Michael had been a minute before. Both men breathed shallowly until he'd gone.

"What do we do?" Michael hissed.

"We go in shooting and get away fast," Raoul said, screwing a silencer onto the barrel of his Glock and handing one to Michael. "I go first. You clean up after me."

Michael nodded tightly. His mind was racing. How could he stop this? How could he avoid killing?

Schreck was apparently just as bad a seed as Alexandra. That didn't justify this, he told himself firmly. Nothing justified this.

But Raoul was already moving with the oiled grace of a cat, and Michael had no choice but to follow him.

In the first instant after Raoul had yanked the window open and jumped in, time seemed to move extremely slowly for Michael. He leapt through the window, took in the scene of the naked couple in the bed, the man very blond and with icy blue eyes, the girl dark and Hispanic-looking, her great breasts half-covered by her long dark hair. Raoul's arm was already levelled at the man, who was reaching for the bedside table; slowly, agonizingly so, Michael saw the black form of an automatic lying there. Raoul's finger tightened, and without conscious thought Michael flung himself at the other man, convinced he'd never make it, that he was too late.

The moment shattered as the gun went off. But Michael had made it. Slamming into Raoul's side, he knocked his arm up and the shot missed its intended target by more than a foot. As Raoul and Michael hit the floor together, the bullet found a mark.

Raoul picked himself up, his dark eyes on fire with hatred. He levelled the Glock against Michael, who rolled over and came up with his own gun at the ready; but Raoul wasn't moving. Michael hadn't registered the second shot, hadn't been aware there had been one; but Raoul slowly toppled over and lay still on the stained carpet, a little red hole in the back of his neck. Michael swung around and saw the black barrel of the blond man's gun staring at him. Absently he noticed the mess Raoul's first shot had made of the Latina girl's stomach. Time slowed down again as the black muzzle flashed red, and this time Michael heard the shot. He flung himself to one side, avoiding the bullet, and advanced. Somehow this had to be ended. The blond man fired again, again missing, and now Michael had a heavy silver vase in his hand, and he flung himself forward and swung the vase at Schreck's skull.

There was a sound like a ripe melon being dropped onto concrete, and Schreck lay limply back against the pillows. Michael dropped the vase.

He sat back, panting, his entire body afire with sour adrenaline. Blood stained his clothes, none of it his. He got up, staggering, and ran to the window. He had to get out. Had to get away. 

A voice from behind him made his blood run cold again. A woman's voice.

"_You....bastard...._" she hissed. He swung around and saw Schreck's whore, her torn and ripped body staining the sheets scarlet, raising herself on one elbow with what must have been the last of her strength. He went cold as he saw Schreck's gun clasped firmly in her bloody fingers. 

Before he could pull his own Glock from his holster she'd fired. The bullet plucked at his shoulder, and for a moment he wasn't even sure he'd been hit; but then the pain of the graze hit him with full force. He thought sickly of Alexandra's matter-of-fact voice. _A graze by one of these bullets is sure to kill._ He pulled out his gun, but before he could fire, her fingers went limp and her eyes rolled back in her head.

Dead silence filled the room. Michael felt frantically in his pocket for the hypo with the antidote. Horrified, he pulled out a shattered and empty plastic cylinder; his fall had crushed it. He fell on his knees beside Raoul and searched his pockets for his hypo, but it too was useless. Biting his lip as the sounds of sirens began to sour the night air, he slid out through the window and down the support back the way they'd come, keeping to the shadows as he ran back to Kitt.

"Michael, what happened?" Kitt demanded as he got in and the car pulled away. Michael lay back in the seat, breathing heavily. The agony of the wound was pulsing in his mind; it was difficult to think. How long had it been since he was shot? How much of the fifteen minutes was left?

"Schreck's dead," he managed. "His girlfriend and Raoul are dead too. It went wrong. The bullets have poison on them. I have fifteen minutes to get the antidote."

Kitt was silent, speeding them down through the canyons, terribly aware of the desperate need for haste. "The woman has the antidote?"

"Yes," Michael said. Already he felt the waves of dizziness, the difficulty in breathing. Kitt scanned his vitals, suppressed an exclamation of concern. "You'd better tell Devon."

By the time they pulled up in front of Alexandra's building Michael was unconscious. His breathing was fast and shallow, his heartbeat thready and faint. Kitt was frantic. Leaning on his horn, he watched as Alexandra's form appeared at the window.

"Help!" he yelled. "It's Vic. He's hurt!"

"What do I care?" Alexandra called down.

"Please," Kitt begged. "I can't help him. Nobody can." Something in his voice touched Alexandra. Standing at the window, she watched to see someone help Michael out of his car and up the steps. Nothing happened. She cursed vehemently and grabbed a syringe from the safe, hurrying downstairs.

"What the...?" she said almost to herself as she noticed there was no one else in the car. As she approached, the driver's side door popped open. "What is going on here?"

"Please," a voice said out of nowhere. "Help him. He's dying. He got one of the bullets ten minutes ago."

"Who's talking to me?" Alexandra snapped in sudden fear. "What is going on?"

"I'm the car," Kitt said urgently. "Please. He hasn't got much time."

Alexandra had had some doubts about Victor Glaser before; now she was almost sure he was not what he said he was. The card from Masaku could have been forged, after all, and good shots were not hard to get a hold of if you knew where to look. He had waited a little too long before answering to 'Vic' more than once; he had seemed distinctly uncomfortable at the assignment she'd sent him on tonight. Looking at the equipment within the car she thought suddenly that this must be some kind of tracking system; there was something very straight-and-narrow about 'Vic', and hadn't she heard something about an extralegal law enforcement team that involved a talking car?

"You're the car," she said. She'd been infiltrated. Fuck. Many had tried; none until now had managed.

"_Yes_," Kitt said. "Please. I'll explain. Just don't let him die." 

She regarded the black Trans Am for a moment. It was so beautiful, and there was something very compelling and human in the soft, agonized tones. What the hell. She could always shoot him later.

She took the plastic guard from the needle, took Michael's limp arm and slid the needle into the vein, injecting exactly a cc into his bloodstream. Then she folded her arms, stood up and stared at the car.

"You'd better come inside so we can talk privately," she said at length, her voice cold and not particularly enthusiastic at the prospect. Kitt closed his door and fired his engine, following her down into the underground parking lot. He slid himself into a slot beside her lowrider and her BMW.

"Now let me get this straight," Alexandra said. "I am speaking to a car?"

"In a manner of speaking," Kitt said tiredly. He didn't know how to explain without explaining that Michael had come here with the express intention of taking her down. She might already know. "I'm a computer, installed inside this Trans Am. I control the car. Victor Glaser is my partner."

"What's his real name?" Alexandra asked, lighting a cigarette. Something made her want to hear this voice, compelled her to listen, to experience this. 

"Michael Knight," Kitt admitted. "Look, Miss Spar, I..."

"Call me Alexandra," Alexandra heard herself say. "And you are...?"

"Kitt," Kitt said, almost surprised by the warmth in her tone. 

"Kitt," Alexandra repeated, tasting the name. "It fits you. Tell me, Kitt, why are you and Michael Knight here in L.A. trying to infiltrate my organization?"

Kitt was exhausted with worry and constant monitoring of his partner. He couldn't find the energy to put together a plausible lie, and something inside him seemed to break. "We came here to take down the drug rings: you and Schreck, and another one in Santa Monica." He could mow her down, of course. He could drive right out of this garage. He could do what they had come to do.

But she loved cars, and she had saved Michael. She hadn't had to do that.

Alexandra dropped the end of her cigarette to the floor and crushed it with her heel. "I see," she said. At this point what she ought to do, she knew, was to shoot Michael Knight and blow up the Trans Am into lots of little pieces; but something new and hot had awakened in her body and her mind which told her that might be the biggest mistake of her life. She found herself thinking of the way his hand had felt on hers, the sharp curve of his cheekbone under her fingers. No one had captivated her this way in years.

There was something in Alexandra's life which she hadn't experienced for so long she didn't miss it, and the way she felt now as she stood in front of the pointed black prow of the Trans Am and heard Kitt's voice brought it back to her. Without really knowing why, she walked forward the few paces between her and Kitt and reached out a carmine-tipped finger to the black hood, ran it over the silky, warm surface. Behind the wheel, Michael moaned and shifted, already beginning to recover. She saw the glistening blackness of blood on his shoulder.

"You'd better let me see that," she said quietly. "He's losing a lot of blood."

Wordlessly Kitt opened the door. Alexandra gently explored the wound; a long deep graze over his left shoulder, cutting into the flesh just below the curvature of the joint. Kitt opened his glove compartment, showing Alexandra his first-aid kit. With a mutter of thanks, she cleaned away the worst of the blood and had a closer look.

He'd need stitches, but she could patch him up fairly well with what she had here. She cleaned the gouge thoroughly, glad for Michael's sake that he was still unconscious, for it would have been agonizing to experience this. When she was sure it was clean she covered it with antibiotic ointment and brought the lips of the wound together with a tight bandage. "That'll do for now," she said, closing the kit and replacing it. "Thank you for trusting me."

"I don't have a lot of choice," Kitt said dryly. "What are you going to do to us?"

"Nothing," Alexandra said after a moment. "Go on. Get out."

Kitt couldn't believe it. "Nothing? You mean you're just going to let us get away?"

"More or less. Get out before I change my mind. Oh, and Kitt?"

"Yes?"

"What happened, at Schreck's?"

"He's dead," Kitt said. "As is his girlfriend and your associate."

"Raoul? Oh well. He was getting tiresomely arrogant, anyway," Alexandra said. Turning her back on the Trans Am and his occupant, she left the garage, climbing the steps to her apartment. Kitt, left alone with the BMW and the Cadillac, couldn't believe it. For a moment he remained where he was, aware of the supreme illogic of what Alexandra Spar had just done, and then his own logic circuits kicked in and he lit the engine, pulling them out of the garage and speeding out of LA on their way back to FLAG.

"Karr?" Riley asked. They sat alone out on the driveway of Richard's house, from where the distant Henry Mountains were visible as darker outlines in the night. She lay on his hood.

"Yes?"

"What's Kitt doing? I mean, do you know anything about what's going on at FLAG right now?"

"I'm getting a tremendous sense of mingled relief and confusion, along with a lot of fatigue and stress," Karr said absently. "He's terribly worried about Michael. That's the foremost thing in his mind."

"What's wrong with Michael?"

"I don't know," Karr said. "He's sort of blocking me. I don't know if it's intentional."

Silence fell again. Riley found herself tracing little circles on Karr's hood. He found it highly distracting. Her slight weight on his hood, her presence, the warmth of her body, were flooding all his circuits with his perceptions. He had never felt this way about anything or anyone before. The feeling, like so many others, was entirely novel and not entirely undisturbing. He attributed it to his sudden ability to admit his emotions, but he was aware that it was more important than that.

"Riley," he said after a little time, "what do you think of Jay Rose?"

"He's gorgeous," she said promptly. "Absolutely mindblowingly gorgeous. He's also apparently the world's foremost doctor and psychiatrist. He can do almost anything. He's pretty much the ideal human being."

There was a certain warmth in her voice that made Karr feel distinctly negative for no reason he could define. "You...like him, then?"

"Yes, I like him. Why?"

"I was just wondering," Karr said. Riley put her head to one side, leaning back against the windshield. It felt so good just to be here, to listen to his voice again, to know that he had really come back, that she did not question the way she reacted to that voice, or to notice Karr's tone when he asked what she thought of Jay. She watched the stars wheel across the sky, slowly, aware of the passage of time. 

"Do you want to go for a drive?" Karr asked at length, diffidently.

"I'd love to," she said, and slid off the hood. Karr clicked open the Shadow's door for her, and she slipped inside. She felt rather than heard the deep thunder of the great engine as he fired his turbines and took off into the desert night.

Not since she had been with the young beautiful NASCAR driver had she felt such exhilaration in speed. He'd taken her with him in his rebuilt 65 Barracuda on speed trials, reaching 160 mph in the desert dragways of Nevada. Her father never knew where she was going; had he known, she would never have been able to leave the house again. As it was, she sat pressed by G-force back into Karr's soft upholstery and reveled in their speed. She risked a glance at the speedometer, which stood at two hundred, and she laughed out loud for sheer pleasure. "I love you, Karr," she cried as they screamed through the night.

Michael Knight came back into the world, and found it an unpleasant place. Brilliant light hurt his eyes; his shoulder pulsed with inexorable waves of pain that seemed to make the room around him billow and swirl. Struggling to focus, he tried to remember what had happened. There had been a woman, a lady in red, and the barrel of a gun.....

Oh yes. Alexandra.

Shifting flesh-colored shadows insinuated themselves into his field of view. After a moment his eyes obeyed his brain, and slid into focus.

"Bonnie," he croaked. "Where am I?"

"In hospital," Bonnie told him quietly. "How do you feel?"

"Lousy," Michael admitted. She smiled sadly. 

"They say you'll pull through. Your arm won't be much use for a while, though. Lucky it's the left arm."

"How long have I been out?"

"Kitt brought you in about five hours ago. You were in surgery for a while."

Michael closed his eyes, thinking. How had he got the antidote? How had he survived? Kitt must have brought him to Alexandra, convinced her to save his life. Chalk up another one to Kitt, he thought warmly. That's...how many times he's saved my life now? Michael found he didn't really want to keep count. "What did Kitt tell you?"

"Only that you had been found out. The woman Alexandra Spar seems to have taken a shine to you, since you're still breathing. Schreck isn't, though."

"Are you sure?" Michael asked tiredly, aware of the way the pain was building. "I can't remember much of the attack."

"Kitt says he didn't read any lifeforms in the house." Bonnie sat down by the bed and took his good hand in hers. "He's frantic with worry for you. I'd better go and report that you seem to be out of the woods."

"Oh, I wouldn't say _that_," Michael protested. "This damn shoulder is killing me."

Bonnie nodded sympathetically. "The nurse said you're to have painkillers when you wake up. Here." She handed him a couple of dark red capsules and a glass of water, and he took them wordlessly. "They'll knock you out. I'm going to go and reassure your partner, but I'll be back in a couple of hours."

"Bonnie," he said miserably. "If she knows, then we're useless. We can't do anything against her anymore. This whole job is ruined."

"Not at all," she assured him. "You've given us some vital information we couldn't have had any other way. Especially about those poisoned bullets. The residual chemicals of the antidote were recovered from your blood, and we've managed to isolate both the toxin and the antidote. We're armed against them."

The last thing Michael saw, as he slid under dark waters again, was Bonnie's heartbreaking smile.

"How is he?" Kitt demanded the instant she hurried through the hospital's front doors. Bonnie trotted over to where he sat against the curb, looking impatient. 

"He's out of danger. The wound is going to keep his left arm out of action for a few weeks, but apart from that he's fine. You saved his life. Again."

"That's my purpose," Kitt said, relieved. "Well, one of them anyway."

"Kitt, how on earth did you get Spar to give him the antidote?"

"I begged," he said simply. "She has a thing for cars. She also has a thing for Michael, I believe. They've been having some interesting conversations."

Bonnie raised an eyebrow. Kitt sighed. "Well, I had to monitor him," the AI said. "He might have been in danger. I kept the comlink open whenever he was in her apartment. She made a move just before they left to hit Schreck."

"Oh yes?" Bonnie said, her voice flinty. "How did he respond?"

"He said something about how she was the most beautiful woman he'd seen in twenty years," Kitt said, embarrassed. "He was acting, of course."

"Of course."

Kitt regarded the slight form of the computer technician with very human insight. "Bonnie, it's none of my business, but I've seen how Michael acts around you, I've seen how he watches you, I've listened to him speak of you, and my impression is that he is in love not with Alexandra Spar but with Bonnie Barstow."

Bonnie looked at the Trans Am, and suddenly smiled, like daybreak. "Thank you, Kitt," she said simply, and reached out a hand to his roof, running her fingers along the sleek surface. "You always did have a way with words."

"Devon will want to know Michael's all right," Kitt said after a while, and there was the faint click-hiss of his videophone dialling. Devon's office sprang into being on the screen. 

"What's going on?" the FLAG director demanded, his British accent brittle.

"Michael's going to be all right," Bonnie said. Devon, on the screen, turned to bring her into his field of view where she leaned on Kitt's open windowframe. "They say they've also identified and synthesized the toxin and its antidote. Michael should be able to use his left arm again in about two weeks."

"Two weeks?" Devon repeated, looking ill. "And they were found out?"

"Yes," Kitt put in. "Spar knows, and yet she let us go, perhaps because she is developing feelings for Michael."

Devon raised an aristocratic eyebrow. "Oh yes?"

"Apparently," Bonnie said, "she also has a thing for cars. Convenient, no?"

"I suppose so," Devon said. "When is Michael getting out of the hospital?"

"They're keeping him overnight for observation," Bonnie said. It was just about dawn, lemon-yellow light pouring up into the blue darkness, washing away the stars. "This time tomorrow he should be a free man."

"You and Kitt stay around, okay?" Devon said. "Bring him home tomorrow."

"Our pleasure," Kitt assured Devon. 

Jay Rose stood leaning on the balcony over the atrium of Richard Harrington's house, and drank. From somewhere music was playing. Soft music, full of sorrow. Through the haze of Jack Daniels he could make out words. _Lacrimosa dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla, judicandus homo reus....._

The day of tears will come, he thought absently. Yes, I suppose it will. Why on earth is Richard playing Mozart's Requiem? Nobody here is dead.

Karr had his memories back. Karr was complete. Karr was more or less healed. He had done what he had set out to do, not without a lot of help from the mysterious Kitt. There was absolutely no reason for him to be here.

He gazed down into the atrium, far below. Richard was down there, moving slowly. Jay saw the bottle of whiskey, empty, fall from his hand. Richard picked something up from the edge of a table; Jay identified it as a bunch of keys from the faint jingle he heard. Richard was just as drunk as he was. Surely he wasn't going to....

He was. He unlocked the white Stingray and slung himself inside. Jay started unsteadily down the steps after him; there was no way Richard should be driving. In fact, he was a lot drunker than Jay; looking around, Jay noticed an additional bottle of Jack half-empty on the table. Damn and blast Harrington, Jay thought, breaking into a run as Richard lit the Stingray's engine. "Richard," he yelled. "What are you doing?"

Richard didn't answer, but slipped Grey into gear and pulled out of the atrium. Jay cursed inventively in German and got into his own car, the rental Firebird. This was incredibly stupid, he told himself. We are most likely going to end up dead. Where the hell was Richard going anyway?

Dizzily he followed the taillights of the Stingray, out onto the road and down the hill to the turnoff for Capitol Reef. Jay pulled out ahead of Richard and slowed down, forcing the other man to slow too, and finally stop. Leaping out of the Firebird, Jay ran to the side of the Stingray, opened the door. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he demanded. "You're completely plastered."

"That's the point," Richard said coldly and before Jay could stop him he jammed the Stingray into gear again and roared past him, almost flattening Jay in his haste. Running back to the Firebird, Jay kept a part of his mind working on Richard's statement as he pulled out onto the road after the other car. _That's the point._ Driving while paralytic was the point? Richard wasn't given to suicidal tendencies, Jay thought sourly as he followed the swerving taillights. At least he wasn't normally so given. This had to have something to do with Karr.

It was difficult to keep the Firebird straight on the road. His surroundings came and went in billows, his depth perception was shot. All he was sure of was the double red glow ahead, the oscillating double vision of Grey's taillights making him feel sick. Somehow he had to get Richard off the road, out of the car, somehow he had to end this stupid game. 

Afterwards, Jay would remember only the sudden swerve of the car ahead, the bright red curve the taillights left in the air as Richard lost control and the Stingray slid in a terrible scream of tortured metal off the road and down the embankment to the bottom of the dry arroyo beside the road's crown, rolling over once to land right side up thirty feet or so below the road.

Jay cursed, pulling the Firebird to a skidding halt at the side of the road, and half-ran, half-slid down the slope to where Grey sat at an angle, beautiful white skin dented and scratched. The engine was still running, and Jay yanked open the door and shut it off before turning his attention to Richard.

He lay limp in the seat, eyes closed. A line of blood traced its delicate way out of his dark hair and trickled over his face; he had been thrown hard against the door as Grey flipped, and Jay thought absently that his arm looked at least dislocated if not broken. He felt for a pulse, found it, deep and slow and faint. Some of the alcohol had faded under the onslaught of adrenaline, and he was able to concentrate enough to raise Richard's eyelids and notice that his pupils were, thankfully, even. Probably no major damage, but he didn't want to move him without a neck brace and backboard. Stupid fool, he told his friend silently. What were you trying to do? And why?

He reached over for the car phone, which luckily still worked. 

"911, what is the nature of your emergency?"

"I have a friend who's been in a car accident," he said, and gave their location, then sat back against Grey's warm side to wait. 

Karr pulled the Shadow to a halt by the side of the deserted highway. "What did you say?"

"I love you," Riley repeated quietly, aware of the deadly seriousness of the statement. Karr was silent for so long that she was afraid, and she was just about to add something when he shut off the engine, silence resounding through the cabin, and sighed.

"That's what I thought you said," Karr told her softly. "Do you mean it?"

"Yes," Riley told him after a moment, so simply she didn't need to add anything.

"How can you? I mean, I'm a computer. Can you....love....something like me?"

"You're not just a computer," Riley said sharply. "And you are not a thing. You are Karr, and I have always loved you. Even back at the beginning, when you were the KARR, I loved you. That is how it has always been. I have never told you, and I didn't mean to tell you tonight; but it slipped out. You have a magnificently unique and very human personality, you are brilliant and charismatic and sexy. I couldn't help falling in love with you."

Karr didn't say anything, but he raised the cabin temperature slightly as Riley shivered in the dawn chill. He was having difficulty taking in what she had told him. All his life he had been emotionless, or nearly so; he had ignored and attempted to evade his emotions, and the concept that someone else, a human, could have such a depth of feeling for him was shocking and strange. He considered. Could it be possible? Riley was one of the most intelligent people he'd ever met. If she thought she loved him....

"Forgive me," he said, aware of the timbre of the silence. "I'm having a hard time internalizing that."

"I shouldn't have told you," Riley said quietly, leaning her head against the window. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

"No," he said, surprised to hear his own voice. "No. Don't apologize. It's not bad. It's just...unexpected."

"I understand," Riley said. She ached to know what he felt about her, desired to know so strongly that it felt like a physical pain, but she was not going to ask; she would wait for him to volunteer that information on his own time. For a long time they sat there, as her heart sank within her, and suddenly Karr shivered.

"Riley," he said. "This time last week I would never have believed I could feel emotions at all, let alone something as deep and meaningful as love. I hardly know what love is. I don't even know how to classify it. But something about you.....affects me, deeply. I don't know how to express it. I...find that I want to be near you. I want to hear you talk, and see you, and feel your touch. This isn't easy for me."

"I know," she said softly, as something warm and bright and sweet began to well up inside her, something that made her voice shiver and her hands begin to shake, something that made her breath come short and strained. "I understand."

And now the silence was comfortable and warm, and Riley reached out for the Shadow's wheel and began to stroke it absently, softly, gently, running her fingertips over the hard-strapped black leather, sliding one hand behind the wheel to find the grey sensor Richard had installed out of the way. Karr made a wordless noise as her fingers brushed the sensor, and she transferred her attention to it. Aware of the grey oval's sensitivity, she was very careful, and her touch traced circles over it, hardly making contact, lightly teasing, stimulating, never quite overloading the circuit. Karr moaned softly as she grew more assured, and she felt something answering pull inside her. 

Aware of the effect she was having, she felt the heat in the cabin rise slowly, and with reluctance she eased the intensity of her caress, slowly pulling away, transferring her fingers to the edge of the Shadow's dash, and then to the seat, opening her eyes. As her fingers slowed and stopped, Karr's voice panel lit briefly with a sigh; she thought she heard regret in the soft sound, and the bright hot wellspring inside her breastbone surged suddenly. 

"That was like nothing I've ever felt before," he said after a while. "Riley, I'm sorry, but it's going to take me a while to get used to all this."

"I know," she said. "Me too."

They shared a companionable silence for a few moments before Karr lit the engine and pulled back out onto the highway, executing an elegant if illegal U-turn, back towards Torrey, and the new day.

Alexandra couldn't sleep. Tossing and turning on her great queen-size bed, she couldn't erase the black elegance of the Trans Am from her mind, couldn't forget the smooth sensuality of its....his.....voice. Michael had looked so ill lying there in the driver's seat, his shirt wet and sticky with blood, helpless.

No, not helpless, she thought, opening her eyes in the darkness. Not helpless; protected. Protected by Kitt.

This was ridiculous. She got out of bed, moving with catlike ease in the darkness, and wrapped a robe around herself. Five in the morning, and no sleep. Oh well. She'd done without it before.

She lit a few candles and poured herself a drink, staring out over the always-lit street below. She needed a vacation, somewhere far away from L.A. and the game.

And there was the problem of the outfit that had sent Michael and Kitt. She had let them live: she had let them get away with the knowledge of her whereabouts and her operation. Why on earth had she done that? she could hear Masaku demand. I don't bloody know, she retorted. Because he is beautiful and Kitt is beautiful and they have something I have always dreamed of. Because I'm getting old. Because I'm slipping.

She poured another drink and began to calculate. The base of operations, obviously, would need to be moved. She had another house, this one in Malibu, a beach house, ritzy, seldom used. It would do for a temporary headquarters while she searched for a suitable relocation point for her operation. Picking up her cell phone from the coffee table, she made a few brief calls.

Half an hour later she was driving her BMW north through Santa Monica toward Malibu; her associates were dealing with the problems of erasing all evidence of her presence from the house on Sunset, and her Malibu place was already being prepared for her residence there. Stopping for a traffic light, she fished the phone from her bag and dialed one of her operatives. "Make sure Schreck is dead," she said. This had just occurred to her. Glaser....Michael.....might not have actually managed to kill him, considering he was an undercover cop of some description. She cursed her oversight and noticed that the light had turned green, and pulled out of the intersection with a scream of rubber. Bloody hell. She really must be slipping.

Her people were immediately aware of her bad mood as they saw her slam the BMW's door and stalk up the steps to the front door of the Malibu mansion. There were exchanged looks of sympathy and mutual resignation among the men who were examining the place for bugs and wires, dusting, turning on the occasional light, taking the covers off furniture, making the beds and sweeping the floors. Alexandra stalked through the house, an unlit cigarette dangling from her carmined lips, her eyes bright with annoyance. "Someone give me a light," she demanded. There was a rush of Zippos being flicked, and a ring of fire surrounded her cigarette tip; she inhaled and blew a great cloud of blue smoke out into the clean air of the living room. "Get back to work. I want everything finished in an hour."

She threw her coat and bag down on a convenient sofa and made her way down the curving steps to her private beach, her heels making deep indentations in the white sand. There was something inexpressively soothing about the repetitive noise of the waves following one another to lap at her white shore, as the lemon light of dawn brightened to pale-gold and rose, blue in shadow. Here, Kitt and Michael seemed very far away, and the travails of the past few days faded to insignificance under the effects of the soft light and the sweet air of the sea. Behind her, the team of enthralled gangsters worked feverishly to perfect the mansion for their mistress's occupance; in the bright new light of Beverly Hills, a pair of nondescript men hung around the police-ridden home of Franz Schreck and his lover. It would all come out all right. For Alexandra, it always did.

Jay Rose paced the waiting room of Salt Lake City General, the last of the alcohol almost gone from his brain. He was furious with Richard, and worried, and deeply concerned about Riley. It was seven in the morning; she was probably back by now, and wondering where the hell her car, her lover, and Jay had gone. Just as he was searching for change to call Richard's house and leave a message for her, the doctor appeared in the doorway and nodded once.

"Thank God," Jay said. "What is it? A concussion?"

"Yes; a nasty one, and he's broken his left arm in two places. Apart from that and a whole lot of soft tissue trauma he's all right."

"Physically," Jay qualified. The doctor raised an eyebrow, did a doubletake. 

"Hey, aren't you....?"

"Jay Rose," Jay said resignedly, watching the requisite glow of admiration in the other man's eyes. "It's a long story."

"I'm honored to have met you," said the doctor quietly, and grinned. "We're going to release your friend after a night of observation. If you'll forgive the presumption, I recommend you get some sleep. You look tired out."

"And hung over," Jay said wryly. "You're right. I'll be back tomorrow."

"What number should we call if there's any change?"

Jay thought, and gave the man Richard's home number. He could make it back there before he crashed, and Riley would need his explanation; it would work better in person. Such things always did.

He made his way back down to the Firebird, drove out of the city, south towards Torrey. The new light hurt his eyes, he felt distinctly sick, and his head pounded, but Richard was safe. Grey had been pulled out of the arroyo and had been towed to a Torrey garage for repairs; no doubt Riley would want some say in that, but he hadn't been thinking when the tow truck had arrived. He had bitten his lip at the state of the Stingray; there was surprisingly little structural damage, but the pristine white skin was ravaged; dented, scraped, scratched and bent. Already, from his association with Richard and Riley, he had developed an affection for cars which was not entirely rational.

He pulled into the forecourt of Richard's house a few hours before noon. Karr sat silently towards the back of the atrium, and Riley was pacing. As Jay's Firebird came to a stop, she ran up to it, putting her hands on her hips, expectant. He opened the door. God, how his head ached.

"Where the hell are Richard and Grey?" she demanded.

"There was an accident," he said tiredly. "He's all right. Riley, do me a favor and get me several aspirins." There was autocracy in his beautiful voice, and she swallowed her anger and her terror, and brought him a bottle of Excedrin and a glass of water. "Thank you."

"Jay," she said, and now her voice was quiet and afraid. "Tell me what happened. You look like hell."

"Why, thank you," he said dryly, and got out of the car with some difficulty. Riley supported him to the couch. He was distantly aware that her arm felt incredibly good around his shoulders. "Richard drank a very large amount of whiskey, and took it into his head to go for a drive in your car. I don't know what he was thinking. I followed him, of course, although I was two and three-quarters sheets to the wind myself. He lost control and flipped, but Grey landed right side up in a dry streambed and Richard came through it with nothing more than a concussion and a broken arm. Grey's not badly damaged."

Riley had gone white. Dead white. Greyish-white. For a moment, Jay was dreadfully afraid she was going to faint, but she took visible control of herself and some color came back into her face. "Oh, my God," she said quietly. "Oh God. He did that once before. Only once. When they shut Karr down for the first time."

Jay glanced over to where the Shadow sat quietly and darkly in the new light. "Was he drunk?"

"Shitfaced."

Jay nodded, and wished he hadn't. The nausea that had been with him ever since the accident was building, with the pounding beat of his headache. He groaned, got up with some difficulty. Riley looked at him sharply, saw the sweat stand out on his forehead, and guessed what was wrong. She sighed, put her arm around him, allowed him to lean on her. He was so slight that his weight was hardly enough to drag her steps down; she helped him to the downstairs bathroom, and held his head for him while he was sick. 

"I'm sorry," he said when he could speak, miserable. She shook her head. 

"Don't be. Are you going to be all right now?"

"I think so," he said. She got him a glass of water to wash out his mouth, and helped him up. 

"I'm putting you to bed," she told him. "Where's Richard?"

"Salt Lake General," he told her, his eyes firmly closed. 

"Right." She led him to the guest bedroom and supported him down to the bed, propping up pillows behind him. "Relax and try to get some sleep. You saved Richard's life."

He was already so deep that he would only remember her lips brushing his forehead as a dream.

"What's going on?" Karr asked, concerned. "Is Jay all right?"

"He will be," Riley assured the AI. "He's just hungover and exhausted. Richard had an accident. He's in the hospital."

"Oh," Karr said, and his voice was soft and quiet with worry. Riley winced to hear it, and reached out to him. 

"He's all right. Just a concussion and a broken arm. But I am furious with him for doing something so stupid. He was drunk."

Karr said nothing, but rolled forward a few feet so that his black prow came under her reaching hand, and she leant on him wordlessly for a long moment. 

That day passed very quickly for Michael Knight and for Richard Harrington, neither of whom was aware of the passage of time. For Bonnie and Riley and Karr it dragged, every hour feeling like two. 

Bonnie lay in the darkness of the Semi, a darkness pierced by myriad LEDs and the faint glow of Kitt's monitoring systems. Kitt himself sat in his habitual place just inside the Semi's rear doors, quiescent. She was trying to grab a few hours' sleep, having been up for far too long, but she couldn't relax. Checking all the monitor readouts for the fifth time, she tried to pinpoint what was bothering her.

Schreck, she thought suddenly. Was he really dead?

"Kitt?"

"Yes, Bonnie?" Kitt said sleepily. She thought carefully about what she was going to say.

"When Michael and the hit man entered Schreck's house, are you absolutely sure Schreck was killed?"

Kitt didn't answer immediately. "I read only one lifeform within the house," he said neutrally, "and that was Michael. However, there was a great deal of interference caused by the thick walls of the house and the bulletproof shielding of the bedroom. I could have been mistaken."

"Did Michael specifically say he'd seen him die?"

"No," Kitt told her. "He said that Schreck was dead, but I don't think that he was in a very clear frame of mind at the time. Why? Do you think he's alive?"

"I'd like to make sure he's either dead or behind bars," Bonnie said, thinking. "We need to find out."

"I agree," Kitt said, and she heard unfamiliar steel in the light tones. Bonnie got up and went to him, leaning against the black hood. "I should go back."

"Not alone," Bonnie told him. "You're rather too obvious to go without a driver."

"Not at night I'm not," he pointed out. "And I'm well equipped for surveillance, besides being bulletproof." Bonnie's fingers tightened convulsively at the image of people shooting at Kitt.

"Let's ask Devon," she said reasonably. "He'll know what's best."

Kitt opened a link to Devon's office. Bonnie leaned in through the open window and watched as Devon's face came onscreen. "Good evening," Kitt said.

"Good evening to you," Devon returned the greeting. "What's going on?"

"It occurred to me that it might be worthwhile making sure that Schreck's not at large," Bonnie said. Devon raised an aristocratic eyebrow.

"I thought he had been killed in the attack," he said.

"We're not sure. Kitt wants to go in alone and find out."

Devon looked thoughtful. "That might not be such a bad idea," he said after a moment. "If you go in after dark, you can be pretty sure no one will see you, and your scanning abilities will make it easier. Be careful, and get out at once if anything goes wrong. All we need to know is whether he's alive or dead, and if he's alive, where he is."

"Understood," Kitt said, all business. Bonnie sighed, giving up, and moved out of range. 

Alexandra lay in the curtained and canopied bed in her Malibu mansion, wrapped and swathed in oyster silk, surrounded by ineffably expensive good taste. She was in that pleasant state of half-dreaming which inevitably ends too early.

It was late afternoon. She had slept several hours, and she felt in need of entertainment. Slithering out of the nest of silk sheets, she made her way across acres of lush carpet to her bathsuite, and turned on the taps in her pale marble tub. She had had a hand in the design of the bathroom as she had in the rest of the house, and the tub was exactly the right depth and size for her. Sunken into the floor, it was curved and polished to receive her body, and heating elements behind the marble skin kept the warmth of the water from seeping away into the stone. She lit aromatic candles, setting them around the perimeter of the tub, and flicked on her electric towel-warming rack. A light rain began to fall over the beach as she slid, magnificently naked, into the steaming water. Her dark hair, freed for once from its pins, floated in a dark aureole on the surface, streaming around her shoulders like mermaids' hair, refusing to relinquish the myriad bubbles that jeweled its strands. For the first time in days, Alexandra felt truly relaxed.

She found herself singing softly. _What's mine is yours, you can have all of it, and I will learn to bear.....oh the boys on the radio, they crash and burn, they fold and fade so slow....In your endless summer night I'll be on the other side....When you're beautiful and dying, all the world that you've denied, when the water is too deep you can close your eyes and really sleep tonight....your beauty blinds._

Alexandra hadn't been in love for a very long time.

When she had been sixteen, and a stunningly beautiful small-time thief and drug user, she had met a red-haired boy in a black Camaro. He had bought a dime bag from her, and left her with something more than ten dollars; the imprint of a pair of clear grey eyes followed her everywhere she went. His name was Brent Harrison, and she had not seen him again for almost a year. 

She remembered, lying in her six-thousand-dollar bathtub, that hard day in cold November. She had been down on her luck, living from one day to the next. Or rather, she remembered dully, from one trick to the next. Her beauty had allowed her to make enough to survive on the streets of L.A. and she had been lucky that far; she was clean. She had been standing in her leather skirt and five-inch heels, shivering, on the corner of Hollywood; and from nowhere a black car had drawn up. A car whose throaty brawling engine she recognized. It had undergone some modifications in the past months, and was gleaming glistening Steinway black, an entirely different effect from the dented and dusty Camaro she'd seen so long before in the dark streets. The driver's side window rolled down, and her heart went cold and hot inside her; for the eyes that met hers were light clear grey, the color of cigarette smoke in rain. Wordlessly, he beckoned, and she got into the car, and he drove her away.

More or less, away from everything. For a month she stayed with Brent Harrison in the high-rent district of Cielo Drive, healing. Flesh returned to her bones; her beauty, already nascent and stunning, blossomed to its peak. Brent had never forgotten the dark-haired girl who had sold him cocaine on the street almost a year before; the Venus who now occupied his bed and his home was a far cry from that girl. She had been young, then, and love was something new to her. With the singlemindedness that had characterized her even at that age, Alexandra had given all of herself to the grey-eyed youth. Nothing and no one had ever touched her in the way that he did.

It couldn't last, of course. Hardly six months had gone before Alexandra and Brent left each other. What she had had with him was world-shaking; precisely because it was so intense it couldn't last. The flame that in other people can last a lifetime flared up in half a year for her, and burned itself out, spent itself into ashes and blew away on a new wind.

She had been philosophical about it. Brent had introduced her to a man who went by the name of Masaku, a Japanese expatriate who was a sort of gangsters' guru, a fount of wisdom and experience in the ways and means of evading the law and making a great deal of money at the same time. Masaku, seeing in Alexandra the potential for superlative greatness, had taken her under his wing, and taught her everything she knew. Brent had been killed some years later, in a bust in New York. She had hardly grieved.

She grieved now, irrationally, lying in the steaming water, surrounded by the fragrance of burning candles, listening to the soft rain falling outside. Brent's grey eyes watched her, in a way they hadn't for years. Again, she felt the texture of his brilliant red-gold hair beneath her fingers, tasted his ivory skin, heard his words whispered into her ear. Alexandra floated, and wept.

She had not cried for so long she couldn't remember when the last time had been, but she wept now; her tears flowed into the bathwater and disappeared. _Like tears falling into rain_.

Hours later, she walked along her private white beach, her toes sinking into the coolness of the white sands, wrapped in an olive silk robe. Her hair was almost dry, flowing down her back almost to her knees, its waves stretched into long ripples by its own weight. She felt strangely light and at ease, as if the tears had been pent-up inside her for far too long, and their release had freed her in some way.

Kneeling by the water, she dipped a fingertip into it, drew circles on the surface. She supposed she'd made a long-needed peace with Brent, or at least his memory; a memory she hadn't called up for years. Still, she couldn't get Michael Knight out of her head. He pulsed gently behind her eyes; his voice, his face, the way he moved, and most effectively the last image she had of him, lying unconscious in the driver's seat of the black Trans Am.

The black Trans Am that talked, she clarified absently, rising and resuming her path. One of her very early fantasies had involved cars talking, and it had been a vague and recurring dream throughout most of her adult life. Cars fascinated Alexandra: their power, their beauty, their strength. Add a personality to that combination, and she was enthralled. Alexandra Spar didn't enthrall easily, but Kitt had managed it, with or without his driver.

She told herself firmly not to be ridiculous. They would come looking for her. They wouldn't rest until her operation was shut down. She had to be careful from here on in.

And she had a meeting in L.A. that night. Bugger. She retraced her steps. Dusk was falling over the beach, stars beginning to glow in the east. She just had time to change and lock up.


	7. Seven

Richard Harrington swam out of sick dreams to find the waking world more unpleasant than the dozing one. He wasn't where he wanted to be, which was behind the wheel of Riley's Stingray at ninety miles an hour, heading for something unyielding.

A little voice niggled at him. Why Riley's car?

Because I bloody made it, he told the voice. Because in more than one way it is mine.

He opened his eyes, winced. The lights were too bright, impossible to block out. Voices clamored around him; his head pounded, keeping in perfect harmony with the waves of nausea that broke over him. He felt cool fingers on his face, soft voices, a recognizable voice. 

"Richard?"

He struggled to focus. The room seemed to be swaying around him. Pale face; pale hair. Dark eyes.

"Riley?" he croaked. Her fingers were smooth and cool on his face, her touch soft and assured.

"It's me," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Bloody awful," he said. "I think I'm going to be sick."

A doctor interspersed himself between Riley and Richard. "Mr. Harrington has a concussion," he reminded her. "He must have absolute rest."

Riley sighed, but left the room. She couldn't block out the sounds of misery; she knew the nurses would deal with him efficiently and with care, but her heart stung and twisted to see him so low and helpless. He wasn't like that. Richard was one of the strongest men she knew. Besides Jay.

Ah yes, she said to herself bitterly, leaning against the wall. Isn't that where all this badness lies? Isn't Jay why you're so miserable right now? Isn't Jay something to do with why Richard is here?

Riley ran a shaking hand through her hair. She had known Jay a week, a few days more. He was admittedly gorgeous, but that was no reason to have this wretched feeling in her stomach when she thought of him. She loved Richard, and she loved Karr; she had not yet come to terms with either of those. Could she love three people at once?

She closed her eyes. Apparently she could.

The doctor opened the door, expressed with a sigh of ill-concealed annoyance what he thought of her, but told her that Richard wanted to see her. "Just a few minutes, Miss Stone."

"Yes," she said dully, and went into the room. Richard was if anything paler than he had just been, slightly green about the mouth. His left arm was in a polythene cast; his brow was bound with snowy gauze, over which his dark hair flopped in the typically Byronic fashion of the injured hero. She sat in the chair by his bedside, took his good hand in hers.

"Riley," he said miserably. "Why are you here?"

"Because Jay told me what you did," she said. He turned his face away.

"Jay," he said bitterly. "Of course. Jay."

The silence tasted old and sour as ashes. "Richard, why did you do it? What were you thinking?" She knew the answers, but she couldn't stop herself from saying the words.

"Do you have to ask?" Richard asked. "I've seen the way you look at each other."

"Richard, don't be stupid," she told him icily. "Yes, I am attracted to Jay. I don't care. Every heterosexual woman who can see is going to be attracted to Jay. That is nothing special."

"Riley...." he said, and his voice was soft with misery. He turned away from her, reclaimed his hand. She sighed. She did love him. She had since the moment they'd met. But there was Karr now. Karr was a bigger player in this drama than Jay was, and Richard didn't even know about that yet.

"Richard, please. Listen to me now if you never do again. I am not in love with Jay. I don't know how he feels about me, but it doesn't matter. I love you."

"What about Karr?" he said quietly. She went cold all over. How much had he guessed?

"Karr is....very charismatic," she said. "I don't know what I feel about him. I am still in awe of his strength and his personality, and I've always been attracted to him. I'm sorry, Richard. That's all I know right now."

He didn't respond. She sat there for another half an hour before getting up and making her silent way down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee.

Her tears, never very far away these days, blurred her eyes; she sat down at a table, alone, with her coffee, and let them overflow. The hospital cafeteria staff were used to people coming in here and crying, and they left her alone. She wept silently, her shoulders shaking, the tears running down her face like rain.

"Here," a familiar voice said. Someone proffered a handkerchief. Riley took it, wiped her eyes, blinked, and recognized Jay Rose. Wonderful, she thought sourly. Just who I need to see right now.

"Thank you," she said, out of habit. He was looking less green, she noted absently. He studied her face critically, his head on one side, and sat down opposite her.

"How is he?"

"Awake," she said. "He won't talk to me. He tried to kill himself because he thinks I am in love with you and not him."

Jay didn't respond immediately, regarding her, his green eyes cool and distant. "Are you?"

"I don't know!" she hissed, miserable. "I don't fucking know. You're gorgeous, as you very well know, and you're charismatic and talented and wonderful and I feel electric sparks every time you touch me. Does that constitute love?" 

"In some cases," he said. "Riley, ever since I met you I've been smitten. You are beautiful and strong and gentle and clever and resourceful, and I want to be with you for the rest of my life."

"Don't," she begged him. "I can't deal with this. I'm feeling something new and absurdly deep for Karr. I can't understand what I should be feeling for any of you."

"For Karr?" Jay repeated, thrown. "You mean...?"

"I mean, he turns me on, he excites me, he makes me feel beautiful and cared for and needed. I want to be around him, want to hear his voice. I want to drive with him so fast I can't see the road markings. What is wrong with me?" she demanded. "Why can't I decide which of you three I want?"

"You're under a lot of stress," Jay offered. "Once all of this evens out you'll be able to see things more clearly."

Riley stared at him, her grey eyes huge and glistening and miserable. "Isn't that the line they always feed the hopeless?"

Jay couldn't answer.

Michael, his arm swathed in polythene casting, sat on the edge of the bed. "He's going in alone?"

"Devon gave his okay." Bonnie gave him a sympathetic I-don't-like-it-either look. "He's just going to find out if Schreck is dead or alive. Nothing more."

"I hit him with a goddamn silver vase," Michael said, remembering. "I think he's dead."

"We have to make sure," Bonnie said.

"I know, I know, I just don't want him going out alone. I know he can deal with it. It's just..."

"I understand," Bonnie assured him. "The best thing you and I can do right now is to get you back to the mansion and safe. We'll monitor him all the time. Like we always do. And you have your communicator."

"That's true," Michael said wearily. "Let's get out of here, anyway."

Bonnie saw him into the taxi, stood watching until he was out of sight. The thought of Karr and the woman Riley Stone flashed unbidden into her mind, and she sighed and pushed it away. She had no time to worry about that now. After they were sure Schreck was either dead or behind bars; after they had taken Spar's operation down, and after all of this was over, they would deal with Karr. Right now....

Bonnie walked back to where the Semi was parked. She was so tired, and there was no time to even try and sleep. She had to make sure all the monitoring and support systems were functioning correctly before Kitt slipped out into the night.

"Is he all right?" Kitt demanded the instant she climbed into the Semi. She grinned tiredly, nodded. 

"He's on his way back to the mansion. He's worried about you, Kitt, he doesn't like you going out alone."

"I have to," Kitt said quietly. 

"I know." Bonnie dropped her hand to the warm black skin, briefly. "Could you open your hood? There's a few last-minute checks I want to run."

Kitt's hood release clicked and rose. With the ease of long practice Bonnie hooked up her diagnostic scanner to each perceptor point in turn, testing the circuitry, making sure he was in perfect health. Justin, Kitt's chief mechanic, roused by their quiet conversation, poked his head over the back of the couch on which he lay. "You're wasting your time," he told her good-naturedly. "I've checked him a hundred times. He's fine."

"Yeah, yeah," Bonnie said. "I'm aware of that. I just feel the need."

"Leave poor Kitt alone and come entertain me," Justin commanded. With a sigh, Bonnie finished her checks and closed Kitt's hood again, running her fingers unconsciously over the smooth prow. She joined Justin on the elderly couch. "That's better," Justin said, regarding her critically. "You haven't been getting enough sleep, have you."

"Not really," Bonnie admitted. "First the whole thing with Karr, and now this. I have no time to sleep."

"When are you leaving on your spying expedition?" Justin asked Kitt.

"As soon as it gets dark," Kitt responded.

"Then you have at least two good hours," Justin pointed out to Bonnie. "Lie down and sleep. Don't worry. I'll keep watch over him."

"I..." Bonnie began, and stopped. The balding cushions of the couch were calling to her. "All right. Promise you'll wake me."

"Cross my heart," Justin assured her. Bonnie nodded, and curled up on the cushions, closing her eyes. For a while she was afraid she was too tense to sleep, until she realized that the couch was floating on a blue sea under a brilliant sun, and that she was already dreaming.

Kitt, left alone, forced himself to relax. The strain of worrying about Michael was beginning to take its toll on the AI; he found himself reliving the moment that Michael had collapsed into his driver's seat, poisoned and bleeding heavily. Frustrated, he turned his mind elsewhere.

A faint but familiar mindtouch reached out to him. He was amazed at the change in Karr; his touch was dark, no longer harsh but silky, cool and distant, aware of himself, complete at last. 

Kitt?

Yes? Kitt sent, distracting himself from the image of Michael's blood.

Has any human ever said they...loved you?

Kitt almost lost the contact in his shock. Karr.....what do you mean?

Can a human feel love for one of us?

Kitt didn't reply immediately, thinking of how on earth to respond. I don't know, he finally said. Do you mean love like between a man and a woman?

I think so, Karr sent. His touch was colored by embarrassment and confusion. I....Riley said she loved me.

Kitt was silent for a long time, thinking about that. Riley Stone. She had always been close to Kitt, always been particularly affectionate, known exactly what to say. He remembered Devon talking about how Riley and Karr had spent a great deal of time together back at the beginning of the project, how Riley had been really broken up when Karr had been deactivated. He knew Karr remembered that too, through him. Riley is....special, Kitt said at last. She feels more deeply than most.

I don't know what to think, Karr said. She and Richard...are lovers. Jay looks at her like a starving man looks at a banquet, and I don't recognize what I see in her eyes. Kitt, is it possible that we can feel love?

Perhaps, Kitt sent, thinking of Riley. What do you feel when you think of her?

Karr paused, thinking. Keep in mind that I am a complete stranger to emotions, he said. It is as if something inside me is overheating. As if my circuits are overloading. But it's not painful, exactly. Not something I want to stop. He hesitated, embarrassed. When she...touches me, it's like a power surge.

Kitt thought hard about that. Karr felt his brother's concentration, waited for him to speak again. 

I think I understand, Kitt said at last. Karr, this is not something you can help. Let it happen. Whatever is meant to happen will.

It's more complicated than that, Karr said miserably. Richard....tried to kill himself.

What? Kitt exclaimed, appalled. Why?

It has something to do with Riley and Jay, I think, Karr sent. He was drunk....he took her car. Jay went after him. There was an accident.

I can't believe it, Kitt sent softly. Not Richard. Is he all right?

He's in hospital, Karr told him. Riley and Jay are with him. I'm frightened, Kitt. I don't understand any of this.

Neither do I. Kitt thought of Richard Harrington, the slender frame, the frightening, exciting intensity, the brilliant gilt eyes. Richard. It didn't make any sense. 

He reached out for Karr, found his brother trembling, afraid, confused. Karr drew away, but relaxed, allowed himself to be drawn into Kitt's embrace. The two AIs held each other in the nowhere of the link, each drawing some strength from the other. Somewhere, Kitt marvelled at the change in Karr, and was suddenly very grateful for whatever it was that had been done to him. He had never hoped to be this close to his brother; it was a sensation he felt oddly honored by, for some reason. For a long time they clung together; then, as if by common consent, they drew back into their respective bodies, both with a great deal to think about.

Alexandra, in black silk, drove her BMW too fast along the highway south to L.A. There was the potential to make big money tonight, but the knowledge that people were probably watching for her appearance made her cold and sharp and businesslike. Her Glock sat heavy and reassuring in her holster; there was another in the BMW's glove compartment. She told herself to relax; Michael was probably still out of commission, judging by the state she'd last seen him in. Probably.

Pulling up to the motel, she parked the BMW in a side slot, out of all but the most determined sight. It was getting dark. She extricated a strongbox from the passenger seat and locked the car.

Inside, three men in varying shades of black waited. All of them wore dark sunglasses, despite the dimness of the room. One was smoking. A briefcase sat on the table by the tallest man; of the other two, the smoking man was heavy and ineffably well-dressed, and the shortest one looked as if he was about to vomit from sheer fright.

"Gentlemen," Alexandra greeted them coldly. "Are we ready to do business?"

"At your convenience," one of the men, the taller one, said. Alexandra smiled, showing all her teeth. 

"Then by all means let us begin," she said, and set her strongbox on the table. "Let me see the merchandise."

The man who had spoken, who she noticed was handcuffed to the briefcase, unlocked it with a very small key. Inside, there were about a hundred sealed plastic bags full of white powder. Alexandra produced a slender switchblade, and before the man could protest she cut a narrow slit into the top of one of the bags. Licking her finger, she touched it to the white powder, tasted it.

"I'm impressed," she said. "About ninety-eight percent pure." Closing the briefcase again, the man stood expectantly looking at her.

"About payment," he began, but she was already reaching for her lockbox. "We requested one million."

"I know you did," Alexandra said, pretending to fiddle with the lock. Her hand crept towards the Glock in its holster. "This damn lock..." The butt of the automatic slipped cold into her fingers, and in one smooth motion she pulled it out, clicking off the safety, and levelled it at their leader, the one with the cigarette. "I'm sorry, Frank, but this isn't a nice city. You three have a choice. Either I leave here with both the coke and the money and you walk away, or I leave with the coke and the money....and you don't."

The black mouth of the silenced Glock stared into their faces. The man who was handcuffed to the briefcase made an abortive move toward his own gun, but Alexandra was too quick for him; dropping the Glock to point directly at his kneecap, she squeezed the trigger. The gun coughed once, and the man dropped to his good knee, screaming, his leg shattered. Coldly, Alexandra swung the Glock back to the other two men. "Would you care to reconsider?"

"Fuck you," Frank said, and dropped his cigarette on the shag carpet, grinding it out. 

"Why, Frank, I'm surprised at you," she said, and moved forward so that the silencer dug into his stomach. "Are you absolutely sure you want to die at forty-six?"

Beside them, the littlest gangster, who had been shaking convulsively ever since she had brought out the gun, lost what was left of his cool. Rather like a terrified rabbit, he bolted; out the door, slamming it behind him, they could hear him sprinting out across the darkened parking lot. Alexandra smiled sweetly, tightened her finger on the trigger.

"All right!" Frank capitulated, rather paler than he had been. "All right. Anything you say."

"That's much better," Alexandra said. "You do understand I can't have you coming after me, don't you?" Frank stared wide-eyed at her. Face cold and impassive as a porcelain doll, Alexandra leveled the Glock at his knees, fired twice. He crumpled to the floor, his face twisted and ugly in agony. The man with the briefcase was moaning occasionally. With magnificent unconcern, Alexandra knelt by him and fished in his pockets for the handcuff keys; not finding them, she pointed the Glock at the chain connecting him to the briefcase, and it exploded in a shower of hot metal fragments. Surveying the room, she allowed herself to smile a little, before collecting her money and her merchandise and slipping away into the night.

She concealed the coke and the money in a secret compartment in her trunk, and drove with decorous caution away into the night. Frank and his associates couldn't very well go to the police about her; they had orders to arrest him on sight.

Taking a detour, she drove into the jeweled canyons, underneath a brilliant star-spangled sky. She had always loved it up here, had enjoyed her drives with Brent along these winding roads. Cielo Drive held fond memories for Alexandra.

She parked on a low side road, fifty yards from the side of Cielo Drive, and lit a cigarette, looking up at the stars. Orion glowed like diamonds scattered on black velvet; the W of Cassiopeia and the tracery of Ursa Major hung in the heavens, part of some celestial parure. Her cigarette was half gone by the time she heard the turbine hum of an engine she recognized.

Kitt came into view round the curve of the road, the bright red light on his nose swishing back and forth rhythmically. He thundered past on the road above her, clearly in a hurry. She found herself hiding behind the BMW, shivering, and told herself not to be so silly. The only thing up there that he could be interested in was...

Schreck's house. But he was dead. 

Wasn't he?

Alexandra got into her car and pulled a quick U-turn. She wanted to be out of there before Kitt came back; despite the fact she'd let him escape, she knew he would have to bring her in.

Kitt sped along the darkened road. He had left as soon as dark fell, and threaded his way through the city as unobtrusively as he could. His windows were darkened; it was not easy to see in, to notice he had no driver. He was painfully aware of the absence of Michael, like a tooth missing from a familiar socket.

Something tugged at his attention as he swept around a curve; a scan reading he ignored for the moment. It was important, but his mission was more important, and he didn't find out until afterward that Alexandra had been watching him. He was to blame himself for that, of course.

Slowing, he approached Schreck's house. Crime-scene tape fluttered in the soft night wind; he scanned the dark house, but read no lifeforms. Turning his attention to the driveway, he noticed that one of the cars was missing: Schreck's bright red Ferrari no longer glowed beside its rich companions. He concentrated his scan on the ion trail of the Ferrari, and started his engine again. The trail led down the canyon, towards L.A. proper. Kitt sighed; it would be hard, perhaps impossible, to follow it in a highly populated area. Nevertheless, he rolled back down the canyon.

The Ferrari's trail ended abruptly at a large mansion just on the outside of the city. Kitt swept a heavy scan over the house, picked up three humans, two male. One of them matched the profile he had for Schreck. 

Suddenly two more humans appeared on his infrared scan, coming around the house towards him. Upstairs, a window opened, and a man's voice yelled, "That's it! That's the car!"

Kitt lit his engine and roared off. Behind him, the men pulled out guns, fired. He winced as his rear left tire went, and fought to control the swerving Trans Am, screeching around in a circle to end facing back the way he'd come. The men jammed more clips into their automatics and kept firing. Bullets struck Kitt's MBS and ricocheted into the night, making brittle pinging noises as they hit. Kitt reversed smoothly, despite the shredded tire, and hurtled away into the night. Schreck's men emptied another magazine after him, before giving up.

"It's armored or something," one of them yelled up to where Schreck stood at the window, his brow bound with white gauze, his eye black and swollen. "The bullets just bounce off."

"Fuck!!" Schreck exclaimed, banging his hand on the windowsill. "Wait a second. That flashing light on the front. There's a slot for it. That has to be a weak point."

Below, his men shrugged. "It's long gone, Boss," they said. "Nothing we could do."

"Fuck," Schreck repeated, this time thoughtfully. The next time he saw that shit-box Trans Am, he would blow it sky-high. He remembered it screeching away just as he crawled to the window, spattered with blood; the driver of that fucking car was the one who had killed Lolita and nearly Schreck himself. Schreck didn't like that, not one little tiny bit.

Kitt's alloy rim struck sparks from the pavement. When he was a safe distance away from the mansion, he pulled into a lay-by and opened a channel to the Semi. "Bonnie?"

"Kitt! Are you all right?"

"Fine. They got my left rear tire. He's alive."

"We're on our way," Bonnie said, and he settled down to wait.

An hour later, the Semi sat in a parking lot just outside L.A. Inside, Justin knelt by Kitt's ruined wheelrim and made disapproving noises. "These things are hundreds of dollars each," he said solemnly.

"Send the bill to Schreck," Bonnie tossed over her shoulder. "Kitt, are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine," Kitt said. "He must have been knocked out when Michael struck him, but recovered in time to see us pull away. He recognized me."

"Where is he now?"

"A mansion on Cielo Drive," Kitt said, and the address popped up on the support mainframe. "With a large security force." 

Justin had set up the jack and was raising Kitt's left side off the floor of the Semi. "No kidding," he said. "Maybe we should send a tank next time."

"Maybe we should," Bonnie said. Kitt looked rather forlorn and lopsided, and she left off pacing and went over to him. "Poor Kitt. We should invent MBS-protected tires."

"Now there's a lucrative idea," Justin said, struggling with the mangled rim. "There. Roll me that alloy, would you, Bon?" She grinned and went to oblige.

Justin worked fast. The new wheel was on in a few minutes, and the tire pressure pumped up to optimum. They let the jack down, and Kitt settled back on four wheels with a sigh of relief.

"You have no idea how good that feels," he told them. "What do we do now?"

"We ask Devon," Bonnie said. "It's his move now."

Riley walked out onto the balcony of the hospital's small lounge. Below, in the open parking lot, she could see the matte black form of the Shadow, and a thrill ran through her. Leaning on the balcony, she watched the stars wheel across the sky.

Jay was there. The man moved as quietly as a cat, Riley thought crossly. She didn't turn to face him.

"Beautiful, aren't they," he said softly.

"The stars?"

"Yes. Like jewels."

_Original_, she thought dryly. She desperately wanted him to go away; she desperately wanted to throw her arms around him and feel his heart beating under her skin. She sighed.

He leaned his folded arms on the balcony beside her. "Riley...."

"Don't," she said softly, her voice full of anguish. "Could you just go away, Jay, please? I can't deal with you right now."

"If that's what you want," he said, his own voice low and soft. "Riley, please, look at me."

Slowly she turned to face him, felt as ever the impact, the burning feverish intensity of his emerald eyes. Jay, in his turn, went cold under the steady gaze of her sea-grey eyes, felt as he had never felt his heart tremble and race. He knew physiologically what was happening in his body; part of his mind was aware of his adrenal glands going into overdrive, knew which areas of his brain were afire with neural activity. But his world seemed to have shrunk, come to encompass only Riley; her face, her eyes, the moonlit glory of her hair. Nothing else existed. 

"Look at me," he repeated unsteadily, "and tell me you don't love me."

For a long searching moment their eyes met, and Riley half-expected to see a faint glow where the air was burning between them. The coldness of the balcony behind her was a welcome anchor to the real world. For one terrifying instant she lost control, moved toward him, into the glow of an almost inexpressible happiness. 

"I can't," she said miserably. "I do love you, Jay." Not, she would think later, that I could have helped it. It was too strong for me.

Some force neither of them could control drew them together, as inexorably as the moon moved across the sky. Jay's arms circled her; her own hands, trembling, rose to his chest, to his neck, his shoulders. Riley felt as if her world was breaking into a million bright shards that floated and fell and dissolved into brilliant golden light. Jay's embrace tightened, and they leaned toward one another, and their lips met.

There are some people who are so obviously made for each other that even their mouths fit, designed to touch, created to be complete only when together. Worlds collided; the heavens shook to their foundations; the universe shifted a hundredth of a thousandth of a degree. Riley and Jay lived a lifetime in that one kiss; it went on forever.

She pulled away. He let her go, though it was the most difficult thing he'd ever had to do. Raising a trembling hand to her face, Riley leaned back against the balcony and tried hard to breathe.

"That should never have happened," she said when she could speak. Jay willed himself calm, regained control of his vocal cords.

"I know," he said. "That was a mistake."

They stared at each other, and now rather than the fiery mutual desire, a sharp and acrid sorrow tinged the air between them. Both knew it could never be; both regretted that as much as they'd ever regret anything in their lives. It felt like a movie; worse than a movie, because it was real.

"I'm sorry," Jay said at length.

"Don't be," Riley told him softly, and looked back up at the stars. "It's getting late. We should go in."

He pushed open the glass door, let her go first with unconscious chivalry. Moving slowly, they entered the hospital: people who had held the brilliance of the moon shining in the cage of their fingers, and let it go.

Richard lay silent and still in the bed, the monitoring equipment glowing gently in the dusk. Riley sat down by his bed, her face still and expressionless, like stone. Jay stood by the door. They remained like that, as the hours passed.

Karr, below in the parking lot, had seen the kiss. Coldly, unemotionally, he lit his engine and left the hospital, driving with exaggerated care until he was outside the city limits; then he allowed his betrayal to surface. He was no stranger to betrayal; this time it was worse, because he could finally feel emotions, and he felt not only angry but terribly, terribly hurt, and cold; as if something inside him had been ripped away. A shock of jealousy had flooded through him when he had seen them on the balcony together; now the jealousy and the betrayal melded together within his CPU, and he let his massive engine scream on the highway, hitting three hundred miles an hour, swerving among the slower-moving cars like a slalom. Riley's grey eyes, the colour of exhaust-smoke in a cold morning, burned into his mind. He couldn't escape them. Something nagged in the back of his mind, something about the way Riley's body had seemed to slump and collapse in the control of something larger than her will, but he ignored it. He didn't know where he was going; he didn't care.

After the first couple of hundred miles he began to cool off, allowing his speed to leach away to 90, aware of the phalanxes of policemen who were following him with their lights and sirens blazing. An ugly thought flashed through Karr's mind, and was immediately dismissed, but the guilty pleasure of seeing all those wretched cop cruisers burst into greasy flame remained in his mind. Rather than allowing his considerable id to take over, he merely put on a burst of speed and left them far, far behind.

Easily avoiding the roadblocks, invisible to radar now with the electronic scattering system he'd forgotten to turn on in the hurry to get the fuck away from that hospital, he drove at a more sedate pace down the coastal highway that ran through Malibu and Santa Monica. He hadn't really intended to come to Los Angeles, but he wasn't particularly displeased to find himself there.

_Riley and Jay_, his mind whispered. _Riley and Jay. _

Karr had never considered himself capable of emotion before the past few weeks; he had never imagined he could feel anything approaching love. He didn't exactly know what love was. If this wretched misery was indicative of love, Karr couldn't honestly see why humans made so damn much fuss about it. Every song on the radio was about love in some way. It was pissing him off, and he flipped on the Bose tape deck, wondering what was in there.

Riley had been the last to drive the Shadow; it was one of Riley's random tapes. Acoustic guitar poured out of his speakers, supporting and cradling a man's tired, rough voice.

_All my life I worshipped her_

Her golden voice

Her beauty's heat

How she made us feel

How she made me real

And the ground beneath her feet......

Karr cursed and cut the tape off again. No love songs. Nothing resembling love. He intended to ignore the whole concept of love, both as it regarded him and as it regarded the humans with whom he interacted; he wanted nothing more to do with love.

He sighed: owing to the alterations made in his core programming, he really couldn't lie to himself as effectively as he'd like, and he so desperately wanted to understand Riley and his feelings toward her that the compulsion to pull a U-turn and go back to Salt Lake was growing minute by minute. Nevertheless he continued to thread his way through the coast roads, coming to rest at last in a parking lot in Malibu not far from where Alexandra Spar's black BMW was rocketing through the night to the Wilshire district.

He cut the engine, listening absently to the whine of the turbines spinning down, and immediately his mind jumped back to that scene on the balcony.

Karr had not seen as much of the human world as Kitt, but he still knew when people were happy together. Having blown off some of the acidic jealousy that had overwhelmed him at the hospital, he realized that neither Riley nor Jay had looked at all happy, either before or after they kissed; it was as if, he thought, they both knew that something could not happen which both of them desperately needed to happen.

And there was the question of Richard. There was always the question of Richard. 

Abysmal sorrow blanketed Karr. Richard and Jay had their own issues; both of them had issues with him. He represented a massive illegal action on the part of Riley and Richard, had been interfering with Kitt's work, was getting in the way of human (and natural) relationships..... He shivered in the warm night. Nothing he had to offer would be worth what they had sacrificed for him. What was he, anyway? A collection of stolen neural nets and bubble chips. Nothing worth ruining a human life over. Never worth it. Nothing.

The memory of the child mannequin shattering on impact with his prow flashed through Karr's mind, and the strange exhilaration of the terrible fall from the clifftop, sky and sea swinging through three hundred sixty degrees. Two deaths, neither of them real. He had been thought dead three times, and each time he had returned.

Maybe for me, fourth time's the charm, he thought, in the darkness. 

Michael hurtled through the night. He had been lucky to find a kid in a muscle car who wasn't too leery about picking up hitchhikers, and who had a fairly loose regard for speed limits, along with a healthy appreciation for a handful of twenties shoved into his pocket. Devon didn't know he was gone. Hopefully he wouldn't know he was gone until it was too late. He simply had to be with Kitt. Schreck was too dangerous for Kitt to face alone. And he had to admit he wanted to be in LA tonight for another reason.

Schreck's goons filled the city. He himself remained in the canyon mansion, surrounded by phones, checking in with his network of operatives every ten minutes. When that Trans Am surfaced again, it was gonna be in a world of hurt. Alexandra was on his list too; the second the black car was dead, she was bumped to the top of that list, and then she would be dead as well, and the city would belong to him alone. He allowed himself a small grin at the thought of that: LA belonging entirely to him. 

The slot on the front of the car was the key. Steel-jacketed, explosive charges fired directly at that slot would take out the car as sure as a bear shits in the woods. He had equipped all his men with such rounds, and orders to fire at the slot, directly at the slot, at close range. No matter what cost. He fully expected half of his men to be damaged or killed in the process of eliminating the car, but it was worth it. 

He smiled again, redly, in the night.

"All right," said Kitt, tightly. "I'm on my way." They had gotten a tip that Spar's black BMW was heading into Santa Monica. Their directive now was to take her into custody, and then wait for Schreck to show up, and take him down. If they could. 

He reversed out of the Semi and hit the street rolling, pulling a tire-screeching U-turn and heading north to intercept Spar. He had only gone a few streets when his private link to Michael lit up with a distress call.

"Michael?" he demanded, worried. "Where are you?"

"Hollywood and Vine," drawled his partner. "Come get me. I'm not letting you do this alone."

"Michael, you should be in bed, you're injured," Kitt snapped. "Why are you in LA at all?"

"I told you I won't let you do this alone. Come get me, or I'll have to come get you."

Kitt, furious, homed in on him. Michael would be safer inside his protected shell than out on the mean streets of the city, but he wouldn't be forgiving his partner for putting himself in this much danger, not for a long time. Humans could be so damned unreasonable sometimes.

He screeched to a halt beside Michael, who was leaning on a stop sign, and popped his passenger door. "Get in. I'm not going to explain this to Devon. You can do that yourself."

Michael heard the anger and the worry in his tone, and said nothing, merely slid inside and pulled the door shut after him. Silently Kitt took off again across the city.

Karr drifted through the dark streets, unlit, undecided.

Schreck's phone rang.

"Good news, boss," said the voice on the other end. "We got both that car and Spar's BMW headin' toward each other in Santa Monica. Got a chance to blow them both to smithereens."

"Do it," said Schreck, hardly aware of the erection that pulsed in his crotch with the excitement and the anger and the exhilaration. "Do it."

The line went dead. How he wished he could be there to hear the screams. How he wished.

Alexandra knew something was wrong, but ever since she had woken that morning she had felt oddly calm and resigned, as if the world was winding to a halt in a rhythm she recognized. She turned into the parking lot where she was supposed to meet her associates, parked the BMW, and cut the engine. Time to wait.

The night felt tight and sweet around her, the scent of blood in the air raising the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. Beautiful things danced in the shadows. Brent's grey eyes watched her from inside her mind.

Ah. A car was turning into the lot, dark, nondescript from this distance. She heard its engine rumbling.

In stereo. She turned to find another car approaching from the south, this one with no lights on, rolling slowly towards the edge of the parking lot, where the water met the pier. _Wonder who that is,_ she thought tightly. No one but she and her associate should be there.

Then, she thought, why do I feel like I'm bein' watched?

Afterwards, Michael could only tell them that everything happened too slowly and too fast at the same time. He had time to register Alexandra standing by her car before Kitt's wordless exclamation drew his attention to the three men with the large guns pointing directly at them. One dropped to his knee in a fluid motion and brought the black muzzle of his Glock to bear directly on Kitt's scanner track. At this range he couldn't miss, and Michael knew that his partner would be dead before he could even get out of the car. Schreck had it in for them. And Schreck knew how to kill Kitt. 

There was the sound, huge in the sudden silence, of a safetycatch being released. Michael had time to think how great it had been, how truly fucking great his life had been with his partner.

Then the world shuddered, screamed, and tossed itself through three hundred and sixty degrees, and vanished into darkness.

Karr had seen them before they had seen him, and he saw the man aim. He knew immediately that they had found Kitt's one weak spot, and that they were going to use it, and then all rational thought was gone in a sudden rush of urgency. He launched the Shadow at them, still in silent mode, turbine gathering speed, moving as quickly as he could before the inevitable became the unthinkable. He had time to think, before he made impact, that Riley would be glad one problem was gone from her life; and then his prow met Kitt's side, and the thought was lost in a rush of pain and confusion and light. The shot that would have destroyed Kitt went wild in the collision. Karr had plowed straight into his brother, knocking him out of the line of fire, and his hood snapped open in the shock of the impact, and the second shot found its mark in his CPU, and the world receded in a soundless explosion of black.

Alexandra, watching, was only vaguely aware of the guns pointed directly at her; she was staring at the drama unfolding before her. The dark shape of Kitt had been approaching, and there was the sudden rush of Schreck's men out of the shadows, and she had time to realize that they meant to kill Kitt, and that they had the means to do so, before something hit the Trans Am side-on and knocked him out of the way, rolling over twice to land battered, broken and barely conscious on his blown-out tires. The sound of the shot was lost in the screaming tires and breaking glass, and she made out the black, lightless shape of another car resting silently in front of them, and then there was another shot.

"No," she said, and heard her voice crack. "No. You can't. Not them."

As one, the men turned to face her. They levelled their guns, aiming into her fair, weary face, and then at her heart, and found their target both times. She did not see the men behind them, wresting their guns away and snapping handcuffs on their wrists. Her blood painted the black hood of her car a darker black, and her eyes closed for the last time, and for the first time in peace.

"No," Bonnie sobbed as they screamed to a halt by the mangled hulk of the two black cars. "Oh, God, no, not like this...."

She was out of the semi and running before they had stopped. She had thought the car with its hood up and smoke rising from its CPU was Kitt, and her heart lurched in her chest to see that she had been wrong; Kitt sat wounded and silent a little behind the other car.

Then who...?

"Karr," she croaked. "It's Karr. What _happened_?"

"Bonnie?" said a little voice from behind her, a voice that made her heart stop again, and start up with a rush that made her dizzy and almost sick. "Bonnie, he's dying."

"Kitt? Justin, somebody, _help...._ Kitt, are you all right?"

"I'll be okay. Just a little dented. He saved both our lives, Bonnie, hurry..."

_Both our lives_? Bonnie glanced into Kitt's darkened cabin. Michael, who should have been in Nevada, in bed, lay with his head against the glass, unconscious. Oh Jesus Christ what has been going on here and how do I stop it? she thought. "Justin! We got an injured AI here, can I get the support laptops and the backup power _right now_...."

They fought to save him. For thirty-six hours they fought, and they were giving up, Bonnie's tears flowing unheeded down her face as she tried over and over again to raise some trickle of life in the damaged CPU, when the doors of the emergency lab slammed open and Riley Stone ran into the room. "God_damnit_," she cried. "I lost Richard tonight. _I am not going to lose you too, Karr. _Do you hear me?"

"Riley," said Bonnie, shaking her head. "It's too late."

Riley turned on her, snarling, her eyes so full of fury Bonnie stepped back a few paces out of instinct. "_Shut up!_ " she hissed at the computer medic. "If you're giving up on him I don't want you here. Get out, all of you! Out. Now!"

She was crying now, but the tears didn't cut through her anger. None of them could stand against her in this fury; they might as well have tried to resist a hurricane. One by one they turned and left her alone in the lab, screaming at the silent AI on the bench, screaming and crying. "Karr, do you hear me, you goddamn bastard, I _love_ you, I love you, you can't leave me alone like this, I can't bear it....."

Little by little she calmed, her anger leaving her, to be replaced by great gasping sobs that shook her slender body like a reed in a gale. "Karr, Richard is dead. There was a blood clot in his head, Karr, it killed him just a few hours ago. I can't.....I came down here to tell you, and they told me, instead......... I don't know how long it's going to be before I have to join him, if you leave me too. Jay took Kitt's call. He said you saved Kitt, that someone was gunning for him, that you took the shot meant to end him. He looked at me and he said that he had to go back to France, Karr. That it wasn't his story any more. That I was yours, and I needed to be with you. He's on a plane right now. _Karr, I need you. I can't lose you again, it nearly killed me the first time. Don't leave me. Oh God please don't leave me._"

But the only sound in the room was the steady monotonous whine of the laptops' heatsink fans. Slowly Riley's sobs faded. She stood up, fixing the damaged CPU with a steel gaze.

"All right," she spat, and her thin frame seemed harder, stronger than ever before, as she stood in front of the workbench. "I thought you had changed, Karr. I thought you had become what you had always been supposed to be. I thought you had begun to care. I thought you didn't want to kill any more people. I guess I was wrong."

She turned on her heel, eyes burning, and stalked out of the room, disregarding the questions and the hands and the embraces they offered, standing outside the door, and simply kept on walking, out into the night. Cold rain kissed her hot face, as if the night were crying too. She walked out of the R and D complex, not paying attention to the people behind her, and when they caught up with her she shook herself free and ran into the night, ran out to the road and kept on running, easily outdistancing them, not feeling the ache in her legs, the metal taste of exhaustion in the back of her throat, only the great howling agony inside of her, the sorrow that took her in its fist and crushed her so that she could not breathe.


	8. Eight getting closer

Riley ran for what seemed like hours; the night was fading around her as she finally gave up and fell to her knees, gravel biting easily through the worn fabric of her jeans; and she got up again, heedless of the blood drizzling from the skinned patches on her knees, of the pain—only dull now, nothing more than an itching ache—and of the greying out of the world around her; she got up again, and she kept running, but this time it was too much, and when she fell again she did not rise; she merely lay there, crumpled in a little heap, looking like a pile of pale rags.

She had no idea how long she'd lain there when the little weary voice from the road flickered through her consciousness; had no idea how many cars had whished by on the dawning concrete, no idea how many hours it had been since she'd slept, or eaten, or known anything beyond the howling crushing grief that closed its fist inside her chest. But she was still just conscious enough to hear when someone behind her murmured her name, in a voice that had no strength to it at all.

"Riley," said the little voice, softly, helplessly. "Riley." 

She made no move; didn't think she could. It was in her head. It wasn't real.

"Riley," it said again, and then: "_Jane._"

And now she managed to raise herself on an elbow and saw, through the shifting black flowers that had begun to bloom in her vision, a black car; a black car, still and enormous in the dim light of dawn, with no one behind the wheel. 

"Jane....."

And another voice, an even more familiar voice, soft and tight with pain, but stronger. "Please," it said. "Please, Riley."

She reached out for the black car, and it slid closer to her, the hissing whine of a turbine engine very loud in her skull, and a warm dented bumper insinuated itself under her hand. The little weak voice came again.

"Jane....."

".............Karr?"

"......don't.......go......."

She felt her nails scrape down the MBS, felt rather than heard Kitt's stifled hiss of pain as they bit into his already-wounded shell. "Karr....."

"Riley......" said Kitt hoarsely. "Riley......Jane.....come back with us."

She swallowed and managed to lever herself more or less upright, lungs burning, her knees and her shoulder where she'd hit the ground utterly on fire, and leaned on Kitt as he opened his driver's side door for her, and fell inside. 

A soft, helpless voice rose around her. "Go lightly down your darkened way," it gasped. "Go lightly underground...........I'll be down there in another day......I won't rest until you're found......."

Dimly she could make out something that looked like a battered black VCR lying on Kitt's passenger seat, and then there was simply nothing else.

**

"How is she?"

"Stable. She's done a lot of harm to herself, but nothing that can't be fixed. I'm amazed at her endurance......she made it about nine, ten miles down the road.....she can't weigh more than ninety-seven, it's astonishing she had the strength to run as far as she did....."

"Desperation does funny things," said Bonnie quietly, leaning against the wall. Michael, rather paler than normal but looking better than he had, gently closed the door of the guest room behind him. 

"Desperation," he repeated. 

Bonnie took his hand and led him downstairs. "Is it true?"

"About Harrington?.....Yes. He....they said it was a blood clot. Inoperable, huge. It was sudden. Because of the accident." He didn't say, Because of her.

"I don't believe this. Any of it."

"I know." Michael fished absently in his jacket and came out with a crumpled pack of filterless Luckies. "It's horrible. It's like a James Ellroy thriller."

"Give me one." Bonnie held out two fingers, and he slipped a cigarette between them. "God, Michael......how much has she had to endure? How much of this?"

"I..." He lit their cigarettes, heedless of the fact that they were in Devon's office. "It began with Karr, I think. No. The KARR. Back before."

"And she always wanted him back," said Bonnie, coughing raggedly on the harsh smoke. "But it was Richard who brought him back."

"Richard, and that friend of his. Jay Rose. Karr was calling out his name....." Michael broke off. "Some famous shrink. He must've................must've helped. With the memories."

"And she loved all three of them."

Michael said nothing, smoking. Bonnie turned her face against his chest, finding a little comfort in the familiar smell of him: steel, motor oil, a faint memory of leather. 

"That woman," she said after a long moment. "The drug dealer."

Michael buried his face in her hair, holding her. "Yes. Alexandra Spar."

"She died for them."

"I know." His lips moved gently against the dark tangle of her hair. "She......was different. She drank the red sky for her evening wine."

Bonnie said nothing for a moment, just letting his strength, the strength of his arms, comfort her. She would not ask about Alexandra Spar. She thought she didn't want to know. 

"What about Schreck?"

"Leavenworth," said Michael quietly. "Maximum security. Murder one and two counts of attempted manslaughter."

"Two counts?"

"Kitt and Karr," said Michael, and she thought she could almost hear a suppressed sob in his voice at the thought of losing his partner. They had all come so close. So very close.

"How.......?" he asked after a long moment. "I....remember Kitt was hurt, badly hurt, but I was knocked out for most of it......how did he.......?"

"I'm still not sure," said Bonnie honestly. "I think he backed himself up to the mainframe, wherever Harrington had it. I think it was an old self-preservation mechanism, some sort of central export and protection program, a holdover from the KARR. All I know is after she......ran out, into the night, after she cursed us all out and ran away, my laptop started flicking lines of code at me." She dragged on the Lucky, clinging to him.

"He was back?"

"He was trying to come back. It was awful, Michael. I....couldn't help remembering those lights going out, one by one. There was just a little flicker of him left, and he was trying to come back. He was......" She trailed off, trying to find words. "He was crying."

"Crying?"

"I don't know. Little helpless noises. The voice modulator on the CPU was......flickering. I found him, somehow, I don't even remember what I did, but I managed to get his core program out of wherever he'd put it and transfer him into one of Kitt's redundant backups. From there, it was just a question of replacing the bits of the CPU that Schreck had blown to shards, and then putting him back where he ought to be." She coughed again. "It was.....like a miracle, Michael. He had been gone......so long, so very long, we'd tried everything.........and he came back. On his own."

"And then? How did she get back here?" Michael butted his cigarette in Devon's seldom-used ashtray, curling his arms around Bonnie. "I only remember waking up and hearing them talking about her condition."

"I....." said Bonnie, sighing. "I did what he asked me to do. He was in pain.....I couldn't replace all the circuits that had been shot....but he wanted back in his CPU, and he wanted......" She gulped. "He wanted to talk to Kitt."

"Kitt was hurt....."

"I know," she said harshly. "Kitt listened to him, and Kitt demanded that I accede to his request. He wanted to go after her. Kitt wanted to take him." Bonnie sighed, taking a last drag off the Lucky and crushing it beside Michael's. "I patched up the CPU as best I could and put him in Kitt's passenger seat. They drove off. I don't remember anything until afterwards—I think I crashed, too.....no sleep for thirty-six hours......."

Michael hugged her to him. "You did a wonderful job, love," he said quietly. "You did what had to be done."

Her face buried against his shoulder, Bonnie sighed. "I don't know what will happen," she said miserably. "I don't know how this can come out right."

**

Karr's Shadow sat pristine and perfect in the dull light of the arc-mercs in Kitt's garage. It was as if he had never been scratched, as if the nightmare of the past three days had never happened. The car sat alone, utterly alone, in the concrete silence; Kitt was in a different hangar, had been moved on the request of Michael and Bonnie, to give Karr......if there really was still a Karr......some privacy. Kitt had been in a lot of pain when he'd returned with Riley Stone's unconscious body slumped in his driver's seat, and they'd wasted no time in extracting both Karr's CPU and Riley from him and taking him in for repair. Karr........had been left alone, after they'd repaired the rest of the damage to the car body and to his computer circuitry. No one really wanted to be the first to break that silence. It was a silence too thick for anyone to touch.

Now, in the dim twilight of the empty garage, an alarm beeped. And beeped again. It rang for quite some time before Karr reached out a tendril of energy and opened a channel.

Silence, then, in the silence: "Karr?"

More silence; but a more pregnant, conscious silence.

"Karr. It's Jay Rose."

"I know," said Karr dully.

"Listen to me," Jay's voice echoed in the concrete vault. "Are you alone?"

"Yes." He doesn't say, utterly, but it's obvious.

"Karr.......Riley needs you. She's.......in love with you. Has been for a long time. Since she first met you, in fact."

Karr says nothing. In France, Jay Rose's green, emerald and malachite, mismatched eyes close in pain. "Listen. I never thought I'd say this, but I love her too. I've never loved anyone like I love her. But she's not mine, Karr. She's never been mine."

Karr's silence changes texture a little. Jay takes heart. "Listen. Riley Stone......Jane Balardine......both of them love you. Have always loved you. Don't throw that away, Karr. She needs you badly. She......I know you don't want to hear this, but you have to. In the hospital in Utah.......I bet you saw us. From the balcony. She and I kissed, Karr. You saw that." He pauses. "That's why you left, wasn't it. I knew. She knew, too. She looked for you, and she saw you were gone. Karr........I've never seen anyone grieve like that. She crumpled." He swallows. "Richard........was unconscious when she left. She got the call halfway down to California, Karr. She figured you were heading south, and she followed. She was about twenty miles north of LA when the hospital called and said Richard.....had died. It was a blood clot. Painless and instantaneous. From the accident." Jay pauses again, and Karr can hear him swallowing back sobs. "He died for her, you know. For her. That's why he wrecked Grey. For her. He wanted not to live any more." Karr can hear Jay trying to regain his talking-to-patients voice. "His time was over. He'd had fun."

On the other side of the world, in his Loire chateau, Jay Rose thinks he will never be bored again. He is thinking about writing all this down, making something elegiac out of something dreadful, and he knows he can never do this; this is his dead friend's tale, not his, and it will never be his to tell. "Karr," he says. "Karr, listen. If you never listen to me again, just hear this. Richard loved you. He loves you now, wherever he is, and he did what he did for you and for the hope that you could be you again, only you, not bound by programming or rules. Just you. And that's the you that Riley loves............that _Jane Balardine_ loves. She always saw you, even when your programming limited what you could be. She told me about you. That night, after we kissed on the balcony, after you drove down to LA, she sat down and she smoked two packs of cigarettes and she told me about you. About how you were. About what you could have been. About the conversations you had, just the two of you, after everyone else had left Lab 3. Karr............listen. Even when you were the KARR, she loved you. She could see that you weren't bad, you weren't evil: you were doing what you were supposed to do. It wasn't your fault you had been programmed badly." Jay's voice is rough, hoarse. Karr bets he's been smoking, too. Humans tend to do that under stress.

"I know," Karr says quietly, his voice modulator still rough, still having a bit of difficulty. It sounds like coughing.

"Karr," Jay says. "Karr. She needs you. Please, don't leave her."

"I won't," Karr coughs. "Will.................will she be all right?"

Jay is silent for a long, long time. "I think so," he says at last. "If you are with her. If you forgive her."

"What should I forgive her for?" says Karr, honestly puzzled, and Jay Rose laughs; it's a wonderful thing, since he has thought he will never laugh again. 

"If you have to ask that," he says, "she will understand."

"I don't get it," says Karr. "Any of this."

"Neither do we," Jay assures him. "Just..........just love her. That is all she needs."

"I think I can do that." Karr coughs a little. "I just.......hope she can understand."

"You need not worry about that, my friend," Jay tells him warmly. "She will."


	9. Nine coming home

When Riley drifted out of sleep at last, she couldn't think where she was: it was dark, enclosed somehow, and instead of lying in bed she was curled against something firmer than pillows, something velvety and curved, and she hurt all over, but it was all right; everything was all right. That was the first thing she remembered: that it was, finally, all right.

She shifted a little, and blinked the sleep-blur from her eyes; and she was lying in Karr's driver's seat, curled in a knot, and the windows were tinted black around her. As she came fully awake, she remembered the rest of it, and reached out, wordless, helpless, and brushed his voice panel with her fingertips. The dash lights were all cold and dark, and she thought suddenly that it had all been a dream, that he was dead, that the drug-runner's guns had killed him finally and irrevocably and that she was going to start to scream and not be able to stop...

"_Demain_," said a soft voice, "_des l'aube, a l'heure qui blanchit la campagne, je partirai. Je sais que tu m'attends._" 

Riley's fingers paused, and then of their own accord returned to the panel, touching the lights. Karr gave a little wordless gasp, his voice still sounding a little rough, as if he were having trouble breathing. After a moment, he continued: "_J'irai par la foret; j'irai par la montagne; je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps._"

She had no words; she could find none. She merely uncurled herself from her huddled knot and leaned forward to kiss his voice panel.

After a long time, resting her forehead against his wheel, she found she could breathe again. "Then...........you do understand," she whispered. "You do know."

"Yes," said Karr gently. "I understand, and I know, and I love you."

She curled her arms around the wheel, hugging him. "Oh, God, Karr........I.....I thought it was over. I thought you were dead. I......"

"I know," he said again, regret in his soft tones. "I'm sorry.....I....." He paused, as if what he had to say next took a lot of preparation. "When I left you in Salt Lake......I didn't know where I was going. I had no idea what to do, I was just.....going." Riley raised her head for a moment and opened her mouth to say something, but he didn't let her. "I wasn't thinking clearly. I just wanted out. And when I got down to LA.....it was as if something finally made sense, Riley, as if I was seeing things for the first time, and I thought that nothing I could ever be would be worth what you'd given up......what Richard had given up......and that without you, nothing would ever be worthwhile anyway......" His voice modulator flickered, a sound like a cough. "I didn't want to be. Not if that was how things were."

"Oh, Karr," she murmured, stroking the sensor set on the steering column. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry, my love......I'm sorry...."

"No," he told her. "No. I.....left in a hurry, without thinking, without considering, and I ran off with the wrong impression. But I was going to end, that night. Somehow." Another of those little coughing crackles. "All of which went right out of my mind when I saw them aim at Kitt. I only happened to be there by accident—I had no idea what was going on until I saw the men line up their weapons, and then there was no time to think about anything. I....didn't expect what happened."

Riley's tears made little glistening cabochons on the hard-strapped leather of the wheel. "You didn't deliberately open your hood?" She had feared that. Feared his helpless misery might have driven him to make that decision; and when Karr decided something, he carried out his intentions to the end.

"No," he said. "And I.....realized, when I found that I was dying, that I didn't want to."

She kissed the recessed _Shadow_ in the center of the wheel. "You don't know how happy that makes me," she told him quietly. "That you wanted to come back."

"I could hear you, you know," said Karr. "In the lab. A little; it was like being in a cold, dark room, no sensory perception at all except a very faint echo of a voice. I don't remember much of it."

"How did you come back?" she asked him softly.

"I don't know." His voice panel lit up with another cough, and then another. "It was.....terrifying, Riley. It hurt so badly....."

She closed her eyes, hearing the memory of pain, feeling it in the echoes of her own bruising. Karr's voice shook a bit. "It was like the cliff, only it went on and on......not just a moment of agony, and then nothing, but pain that I thought would drive me mad....."

"Oh, Karr," she whispered.

"Then.....it.....it went away, somehow. Bonnie was there. I remember coming out of it and seeing Bonnie, and the lab, and everyone there was....so happy..."

"Of course they were," she told him, gently. "You saved a lot of lives, Karr."

He coughed, the lights jumping, and she stroked his dash as if to soothe him. "Riley......?" he said, after a moment. "Jay called me. From France."

She said nothing, just stroking his curving dash, over and over. "He said....he said he'd never stop loving you."

She knew he was watching her. The fisheye lens on the dash was glowing faintly red. 

"I know," she said, after a moment. "That's what he said to me, when he drove away. I'll never forget him," she added, in a slightly different tone. "But he was right, Karr. I could never love him the way I love you. I can't help it."

Karr sighed, settling on his springs; the cabin heat rose a little. "Then.....we have an understanding."

"We have an understanding," she repeated, and then, softer, "_mon cher_."

**

It was raining when they buried Alexandra in the clifftop cemetery. Riker Spar read the service; neither of them had been religious, but the words felt right in his mouth, sounded right in the gentle drizzle that blanketed the coast in grey. The curl of smoke from Riker's cigarette blended with the rain, a light clear pale grey exactly the colour of a pair of eyes that had haunted Alexandra for the last few fateful weeks. 

Few people had come; few had been invited. Alexandra had not led the sort of life that makes friendship easy to come by, and those who had counted her a friend had not wished to see her lowered into the cold ground; she had been so much alive that it was better to remember her that way, rather than as a name and pair of dates on a black headstone.

Riker bent down, closing the book, and set a single white rose on his sister's coffin. The rain intensified, soaking his hair, beating down on the shoulders of his four-thousand-dollar Armani topcoat, as he stood back and let them lower her into the earth.

He turned and walked back through the pouring rain to his Viper, and paused; two other black cars remained, though the rest of the funeral party had already left. Riker squinted through the rain, and made out a dim red light on the front of one of them, and recognized that fucking Trans Am that had followed Alex, back when this began. Oh, someone was going to hurt for this, he thought, slipping his hand into his pocket and closing his fingers around the butt of the .38 automatic he carried. He started to walk again, more purposefully this time. 

The Trans Am's door clicked open, and a tall man in black got out, leaning on the car's roof, ignoring the rain as Riker was ignoring it. They stared at each other through the grey curtains. Riker was the first to speak.

"You," he said raggedly. 

"She was a heroine," said the man in black. "She saved my life twice."

Riker blinked. The red light on the Trans Am's nose flicked back and forth.

"I am so sorry," said another voice, a soft, cultured voice that made Riker think of New England. "She was a remarkable woman, Mr. Spar. I owe her my life as well."

Riker stared. The man in black gave him a weary smile. Beside them, the other black car—which was empty, Riker saw—moved forward a little to join them. He was still staring.

"As do I," said another voice, low and cool. "Please accept our condolences, Mr. Spar."

The man in black reached out and gripped Riker's shoulder briefly, a quick meaningful gesture of sympathy and gratitude, and got back into his talking Trans Am. The two black cars pulled out of the lot, smoothly and surely even in the downpour, and left Riker standing alone by his Viper, the .38 forgotten in his pocket, suddenly aware that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy.

**

"I'm sorry about Harrington," said Devon, quietly, standing behind his desk with his arms folded, looking more than ever like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. "I'm so sorry, Riley."

She didn't reply immediately, toying with the butterfly clip on the bandage around her wrist. "Jane," she said, after a while. "I think it's Jane again, now."

Devon blinked, and sat down. "May I ask why?"

She looked up, and met his gaze, and he found himself thinking how old she looked all of a sudden; not _old_ so much as mature, perhaps, or aware. "I was Riley Stone for a long time. I stopped being Jane Balardine for a reason, but that reason's.......gone, now. And I find I don't much like Riley Stone's memories."

Devon regarded her thoughtfully. "Harrington.....?"

"Yes. Richard was part of Riley Stone's life. Both of them are over now." Her voice was level, controlled. "Devon.....I'm sorry. About all of this. About lying to you, stealing the disks, getting everyone involved in this little soap opera of mine."

He sighed. "Don't be. We've got Karr, now. We have never really had Karr before, and it's enough that you brought him to us. He saved Kitt's life. And Michael's."

"I know," said Jane Balardine. "And mine."

There was another silence, but it was a companionable, rather pleasant one. Eventually Devon reached across the desk and patted her hand. "It's good to have you back, Jane. We've all missed you."

She gave him a tired grin. "I never thought I'd hear that. I expected you to hand me my severance pay when you called me in here."

"Good Lord, you didn't really think I was going to fire you?"

"Of course I did," said Jane. "I mean, I stole valuable and sensitive FLAG property, along with a whole bunch of other infractions. What else could you do?"

"Give you a considerable raise," said Devon wryly. "Besides, if I fired you, I'd have to explain myself to your father, which is _not_ a prospect I relish in the slightest." He gave her a little smile. "You need have no fear for your job security, my dear."

"Good." She beamed. "Because you'd have to drag me out of here with a chainfall."

"I rather expected you to say that." He leaned his elbows on the desk and adopted a more businesslike tone. "So how is Karr? Back to.....er, normal, I suppose I should say?"

"He's all right. Very shaken, but all right. There's something wrong in some of the vocal circuitry, he sounds like he's got a nasty cough, but they're working on him now." She paused. "What about Kitt?"

"Kitt's just fine," said Devon, with another smile. "I think it might do him some good to be......well, not to be one of a kind, for once. It's a very familiar feeling for him, and not necessarily a good one."

"I know," she said. "He's....helped Karr a lot, Devon. He finished the therapy we were doing on him. He let him know what he had been."

"I see," said Devon quietly.

"He needed to know." Jane looked down at her clasped hands. "He couldn't understand the memories he _did _have. He needed some of the gaps filled in."

"I think I understand."

She was about to say something else, to launch into a description of those terrible first days, of how they'd been so afraid they'd wiped _Karr_ along with his old programming, but the phone rang. Devon picked it up. "Hello?"

She sat back, watching him. A series of emotions flickered across his face; she recognized surprise, then incredulity turning to amusement and then to serious consideration. "It's an interesting proposition," he said, his accent very pronounced. "But not entirely, shall we say, original? Kitt's voice was used for a radio play once, and we've had offers like this before." 

She stared. What on earth was he talking about?

"...and while I don't have anything against such an agreement, it's not my call to make," he was saying. "I think you'd have to ask him."

"Devon?"

He waved her silent. "And Riley, of course. Jane Balardine."

"Devon, what the hell are you talking about?"

He took the receiver away from his ear and smiled. "It's a Mr. Jay Rose. He's interested in possibly casting Karr in a film. He says his voice has a remarkable quality he thinks is perfect for a project of his."

"Karr? In a movie?" Jane demanded, and then, "Jay Rose?"

"I believe you are acquainted with the gentleman," said Devon. "Just a minute, Mr. Rose." He pressed the _Hold_ button on the phone, and set it down. "He says he has a story he would like to tell, and he would like to ask Karr to help him tell it."

"What story?" she asked, head still reeling at the thought of Karr on film. How...? They'd have to dub him over some brainless prettyboy actor, and she felt her mind revolt at the thought. Who on earth was good enough to do Karr's voice justice?

"He says it's a love story," said Devon gently. "And a kind of biography. The story of a friend of his, who saved a life, and ended his. I believe you were acquainted with _that_ gentleman as well."

Jane's fingers tightened on the arms of her chair. "Oh, God," she murmured. "Oh, dear sweet God."

"Yes, I thought that might be your reaction," he said. "I'll tell him to forget about it."

She heard herself say, "No. No, don't. I...let me talk to him, please, Devon?"

Wordlessly he handed her the phone, and a moment later got up and left his office, gently closing the door behind him to leave her privacy intact. She didn't see the little smile on his face as he turned away.

**

Epilogue

Eight months later, the woman who had called herself Riley Stone strode down a staircase covered in red carpet, wearing a flowing dark-blue gown scattered with tiny gems, on the arm of a man whose green eyes were slightly different colours, and whose black hair featured one startling streak of white. The blinding staccato flare of flashguns surrounded them on a wave of hazy noise; microphone after microphone was thrust towards them, hundreds and hundreds of people struggled for a glimpse. 

Fascinating though they were, the crowd's attention was only half on them; the true focus of their excitement was the low-slung black car that waited at the end of the carpet, a car without a recognizeable make or model, but a thing of unbelievable, powerful beauty. The people who were staring helplessly at it found them struggling for images that were beyond them, of frozen oil, of the deep burnished black of obsidian, of the glossy musculature of true-black Arabian stallions. 

What a gimmick, they thought admiringly, as Jay Rose opened the driver's side door of the black car and helped Jane Balardine inside, before returning to stand at the end of the carpet; what a magnificent gimmick, bringing the star to the premiere in the car featured in the film; and some of them, watching, were close enough to see how Jane's slender hands did not touch the wheel as the car moved away from the curb, watched as she leaned back in the seat and laced her fingers behind her head, and they wondered. The film had been artistic, elegiac, but believable; and the more fancy-minded of the watchers found themselves considering how on earth they'd pulled some of those stunts, since everybody _knew_ the damn car wasn't alive, while the others contented themselves with the computer animation theory. But they wondered, as they watched Jay Rose staring after the disappearing taillights, why a man who had just opened his most successful feature film ever—one of the most successful feature films of the last decade—was looking as though he was watching the true love of his life drive away with another man.


End file.
